PantagruelNovember 04, 2022 at 16:596450 views151 comments
If thinking is strategic, is it therefore also rational? Is it possible to be a criminal, and also rational, in the strictest sense of the word? What about reasonable?
Comments (151)
PantagruelNovember 04, 2022 at 17:02#7539290 likes
Is ethics rational? Or is it just rational to be ethical?
I thought about starting a thread to discuss the difference between rationality and reason. They seem different to me, but they are considered synonyms. They are generally defined in terms of each other, so it's hard to separate. How would you define them?
This is how I, tentatively, see it - The discussion of anything can be rational, logical; but premises are not necessarily rational. I'd go further and say premises are generally not rational, which isn't to say they are irrational. Most of our thinking is not rational. We grasp most things without tracing our knowledge back to a source. Rationality comes into play when we have to go back and justify what we've proposed.
One way I think of reason as different from rationality, although I'm not sure it is legitimate, is in terms of broader values. Rationality is a hammer. Reason takes into account issues beyond the bare facts, e.g. clarity, civility, contemplation, cooperation. Again, that's my idiosyncratic way of looking at it.
So, yes. Discussions of criminality and ethics can be rational and reasonable.
This is how I, tentatively, see it - The discussion of anything can be rational, logical; but premises are not necessarily rational. I'd go further and say premises are generally not rational, which isn't to say they are irrational. Most of our thinking is not rational. We grasp most things without tracing our knowledge back to a source. Rationality comes into play when we have to go back and justify what we've proposed.
One way I think of reason as different from rationality, although I'm not sure it is legitimate, is in terms of broader values. Rationality is a hammer. Reason takes into account issues beyond the bare facts, e.g. clarity, civility, contemplation, cooperation. Again, that's my idiosyncratic way of looking at it.
This tracks with me. I was continuing my inter-evaluation with ethics (which I think is another top-level descriptor). What if ethics is just the projection of one's relative degree of empathy in any given situation? Then ethics is just rationalization. To rationalize is to confine something to a mental schema (rationality is a hammer, as you put it). To reason is to solve a problem. Ethics is reasonable. And it is reasonable to be ethical. Butt may not be rational, if there is self-sacrifice is required.
I think that reason is probably the best umbrella term, if there is one.
PantagruelNovember 04, 2022 at 18:10#7539440 likes
Also, I don't think thinking is strategic. I'm not even sure what that means. Certainly a lot of our thinking is not goal oriented.
T Clark
I was thinking of a criminal. Who can have high situational-awareness and make complex plans. But is that sufficient to rationality?
What I should have said is that thinking is not necessarily strategic.
I don't think complexity makes something rational. It's the connections between elements that are important. I'll stick with yes, criminal thinking can be rational. Didn't you see "Ocean's 11," "The Italian Job," and all those other heist movies.
PantagruelNovember 04, 2022 at 18:34#7539530 likes
By "top level descriptor" do you mean a category at the same level as reason or rationality? Or what?
Yes, trying to capture some kind of paradigm descriptor of thought in its purest or ideal form. I believe there are elements of logic, ethics, awareness, rationality. Reason.
If thinking is strategic, is it therefore also rational?
Not necessarily. One may think strategically within a framework of delusion, with internal rules that match no rational sequence in the world of 'normal' people.
Is it possible to be a criminal, and also rational, in the strictest sense of the word?
Of course. Strict or lax, 'rational' refers to the thinking process, not the aim to which it is directed. Laws are arbitrary and changeable; the decision to break one or more of them can be motivated by any number of rational intentions.
I thought about starting a thread to discuss the difference between rationality and reason. They seem different to me, but they are considered synonyms.
They are, usually, but the derived word 'reasonable' is not synonymous with 'rational'. Reasonableness is a social judgment; rationality is a psychological one.
Yes, trying to capture some kind of paradigm descriptor of thought in its purest or ideal form. I believe there are elements of logic, ethics, awareness, rationality. Reason.
I think I know why you've chosen those elements, but you can't have thought without Intuition, emotion, imagination, visualization, memory.
the derived word 'reasonable' is not synonymous with 'rational'.
I think that ambiguity is the reason I never took on the task of clarifying the distinction. There's just too much room for pointless disagreement descending into "sez you." People have a lot invested in what is considered reasonable or rational and what is not.
you can't have thought without Intuition, emotion, imagination, visualization, memory.
Just so! Reason is a component of the thinking process (normally) and the result is judged as rational or logical when the conclusion is coherent with the premises and information available. The premises or belief from which the thought begins may be entirely false (religious tenet, cultural assumption) and the information may be incorrect (optical illusion, misuse of language, inaccurate measurement, deliberate lie) and therefore the conclusion derived from them entirely wrong, disastrously wrong, as long as they are internally consistent, the thought is rational.
People have a lot invested in what is considered reasonable or rational and what is not.
I suppose... But don't they in just about every kind of opinion and belief? Avoiding all of those subjects doesn't leave much to discuss. The weather, traffic, our children and our dreams...
PantagruelNovember 04, 2022 at 19:08#7539650 likes
I think that ambiguity is the reason I never took on the task of clarifying the distinction. There's just too much room for pointless disagreement descending into "sez you." People have a lot invested in what is considered reasonable or rational and what is not.
I think the terrain can be mapped. I'm reading Understanding and Explanation; in exploring the contention between the scientistic and hermeutic approaches to understanding and intentionality Apel comments several times how the approaches mutually exclude to the extent that they complement. I think that the "key players" in this debate likewise all play their parts and can be profitably explored through example usages (if not reduced to simplistic definitions).
The premises or belief from which the thought begins may be entirely false (religious tenet, cultural assumption) and the information may be incorrect (optical illusion, misuse of language, inaccurate measurement, deliberate lie) and therefore the conclusion derived from them entirely wrong, disastrously wrong, as long as they are internally consistent, the thought is rational.
Sure, the premises may be wrong, but they also may just be non-rational. In a recent thread I made the claim that all premises, if you trace them back to their source, are non-rational.
I suppose... But don't they in just about every kind of opinion and belief? Avoiding all of those subjects doesn't leave much to discuss. The weather, traffic, our children and our dreams...
I'm mostly thinking about here on the forum. There are some topics I avoid because I don't think the discussion will go anywhere useful. This one seems to be proving me wrong in that regard. For many here, rational is a value judgement. They don't acknowledge the legitimacy of things they don't consider rational or the distinction between irrational and non-rational.
I think that ambiguity is the reason I never took on the task of clarifying the distinction. There's just too much room for pointless disagreement descending into "sez you." People have a lot invested in what is considered reasonable or rational and what is not.
T Clark
I think the terrain can be mapped.
As I noted in my response to @Vera Mont, this discussion seems to be proving me wrong.
Sure, the premises may be wrong, but they also may just be non-rational.
That makes no difference to the kind of thinking that is applied to a problem. The whole chain of reasoning may be invalidated at the end by one irrational premise or one false datum along the way, but the process itself is either rational or irrational. Just as the process of smelting is the same whatever the metal. The raw ores going in affect the product, not the process.
There are some topics I avoid because I don't think the discussion will go anywhere useful.
I try don't think of forum topics in terms of utility... No, on second look, that's a lie. I do gain something, even from some of the futile, circular ones. Maybe not something practical, but at the very least, brief glimpses into other people's minds. Sometimes it's dark in there - but mostly it's just different.
Can you briefly summarize these. That may be an unreasonable, although not irrational, request.
It concerns the distinction between deductive nomological events which have "explanations" (are cases of laws taking place in specifiable contexts) versus the meaningfulness of human events, which can be interpreted in contexts, which are themselves meaningful (the hermeneutic circle). Mechanical causality versus freedom is another dimension of this inquiry. I wasn't citing it so much for content as an example of how disparate concepts can complement and exclude and participate in a mutual inter-definition.
Srap TasmanerNovember 04, 2022 at 20:31#7539810 likes
Some nice points in this thread, which I'll reread.
I'm only surprised no one has yet used the phrase "instrumental rationality," which could be defined something like, the rational selection of a course of action to achieve a given goal -- the kicker being that this means any goal, however arbitrary. Sometimes "reasonableness" is contrasted specifically with instrumental rationality in submitting to judgment also the worthwhileness of the goal and the acceptability of the means of achieving it, so a broader decision-making process.
PantagruelNovember 04, 2022 at 20:37#7539820 likes
I'm only surprised no one has yet used the phrase "instrumental rationality," which could be defined something like, the rational selection of a course of action to achieve a given goal -- the kicker being that this means any goal, however arbitrary. Sometimes "reasonableness" is contrasted specifically with instrumental rationality in submitting to judgment also the worthwhileness of the goal and the acceptability of the means of achieving it, so a broader decision-making process.
I think instrumental rationality aligns closely with something I mentioned, which was situational awareness. Vera mentioned how one can think instrumentally, but within a misguided or delusive framework.
Reply to Pantagruel To be rational is to be highly reason-responsive. Reason-responsiveness has two components: a receptivity component and a reactivity component.
To be receptive to Reason is for one's faculty of reason to be reliably informing one about what one has reason to do and reason to believe. To be reactive to Reason is to be able reliably to respond to that information and act or believe accordingly.
Thus, a maximally rational person is someone whose reason reliably tells them about the reasons that there are, and who correspondingly acts and believes as reason bids them act and believe.
To be reasonable, by contrast, is to be suitably reason-responsive to moral reasons. A perfectly rational person would also be reasonable then. But a reasonable person will not necessarily be perfectly rational, for it is consistent with being reliably reason-responsive with respect to moral reasons that one might not be reliably responsive to instrumental or aesthetic or epistemic reasons.
This is also why a person who is highly reason-responsive to instrumental reasons - so, they've very self-interested and very good at doing what promotes their own ends - may not be reasonable if, that is, their pursuit of self-interest is not suitably regulated by moral considerations.
Similarly, someone might be highly reason-responsive to aesthetic reasons - and so be rational in that respect - yet not be reasonable (Gauguin, for instance, who abandoned his family to pursue his art - that was aesthetically rational, but not at all reasonable).
Thus, a maximally rational person is someone whose reason reliably tells them about the reasons that there are, and who correspondingly acts and believes as reason bids them act and believe.
Insofar as physical, legal, social and moral constraints allow them to. Sometimes both the rational and reasonable way to act is as unreasonably and irrationally as the people in one's community - else one may find onself in a bonfire without any toenails. Even leaving one's family may be both rational and reasonable - some families are eminently leave-worthy - but a morally bound man won't break his promises.
No human being is purely one type or another, can make all their decisions according the same mode of thought, and everything they do decide is situation-dependent. So, all decisions are likely to be some mixture of rational, ethical, instinctive, emotional and coerced.
PantagruelNovember 04, 2022 at 21:58#7539910 likes
Reply to Bartricks And do you think, for example, that these reason-orientations would tend to produce different orientations toward various philosophical topics, so some people might naturally lean towards particular types of solutions, others others? Then many of our antinomies could be objectifications of these different rational-types.
PantagruelNovember 04, 2022 at 22:00#7539940 likes
No human being is purely one type or another, can make all their decisions according the same mode of thought, and everything they do decide is situation-dependent. So, all decisions are likely to be some mixture of rational, ethical, instinctive, emotional and coerced.
I think so too. And tradition-authority influenced.
Reply to Pantagruel Philosophical puzzles are puzzles about the nature of reality. Each one has but one solution, not multiple solutions (until we figure out what the correct solution is, there may be several candidate solutions in play - but the fact remains that there is in reality only one correct solution to any philosophical problem).
To solve philosophical problems requires being highly responsive to epistemic reasons (also known as evidential reasons). So, the ideal philosopher is perfectly responsive to epistemic reasons.
Needless to say, there are very few people like that. Most people's picture of reality is based largely on what they would like to be the case, or what they already believe (and can't be bothered to revise), or what they believe ought to be the case, or what they find it most attractive to consider being the case.
So, most people will reject the conclusion of an argument if they dislike it, or if it conflicts with the body of beliefs they already hold, or if they think it would be immoral to believe such a conclusion, or if they find it an ugly belief to hold. And they will do that regardless of how good the argument is.
Note: the perfectly rational person is not necessarily going to be the perfect philosopher. For there may be truths about reality that we do not have overall reason to believe. The ideally rational person recognizes what they have overall reason to believe and believes it. That we have epistemic reason to believe x does not entail that we have overall reason to believe it.
So, the dedicated philosopher may not be perfectly rational.
That makes no difference to the kind of thinking that is applied to a problem. The whole chain of reasoning may be invalidated at the end by one irrational premise or one false datum along the way, but the process itself is either rational or irrational.
I agree with this but, as I noted, I think premises are by their nature non-rational, which is not to say irrational.
I do gain something, even from some of the futile, circular ones.
Yes, I too have gained from those types of discussions. I've learned to avoid them if possible. I also try to keep the opening posts on threads I start very specific so I have a better chance to really examine the subject I'm interested in.
Sometimes "reasonableness" is contrasted specifically with instrumental rationality in submitting to judgment also the worthwhileness of the goal and the acceptability of the means of achieving it, so a broader decision-making process.
If thinking is strategic, is it therefore also rational? Is it possible to be a criminal, and also rational, in the strictest sense of the word? What about reasonable?
Something being rational does not make it ipso facto good. In essence, reason is using knowledge to achieve gaols (S. Pinker) and this can be in the service of almost any purpose imaginable, from serial killing to political dictatorship.
We tend to fetishise reason as a sort of transcendental virtue. And while I think reason is non-negotiable for civilised discourse, it may also be used to achieve lamentable outcomes. And how you determine the lamentable from the benign will likely depend upon your worldview.
We tend to fetishise reason as a sort of transcendental virtue. And while I think reason is non-negotiable for civilised discourse, it may also be used to achieve lamentable outcomes.
And this is another aspect I think. Reason is also social and dialogic/dialectical in nature. Even when we think, we reason internally as an internal discussion.
Here's my thinking. Non-trivial premises come from one of two places 1) They are established using deductive logic from previous premises or 2) They are established by inductive logic from empirical observations. If you follow every chain of deductions backwards, you will ultimately come to at least one premise that has to be established empirically.
How do people turn empirical observations into generalizations that can be used as premises? 1) They look at patterns they or others have seen before with other observations or, if that doesn't work or if they haven't seen similar observations before 2) They generate new generalizations that can be tested. If you follow every chain of generalizations backwards, you will ultimately come to at least one that has to be established based on a new generalizations.
How do people generate new generalizations from observations? I do it by pouring information into my brain, letting it spin around for a while until a pattern emerges, an insight. Intuition. Generating a new premise, a hypothesis, is not a logical process. It requires that something new be created where there was nothing before. Then that new idea can be tested using empirical methods. You have to have a hypothesis before you can apply logic. Before you can be rational.
Even when we think, we reason internally as an internal discussion.
This is not my personal experience. Most of my useful thinking, things other than worrying or fantasizing, takes place subconsciously. It pops up and then I have to apply reason to check whether or not it makes sense.
How do people generate new generalizations from observations?
Why can't we suppose that much of the reasoning we do every day begins, not with a generalization generated by the thinker, but by a 'given' circumstance. That, I guess would be empirically observable:
Situation: I am standing on a hard surface in the dark.
Problem: I am not satisfied to stand here until daybreak (Memory has kicked in with two pieces of information: it's night and it usually ends with sunrise)
I don't see any of that as irrational.
Situation: I am standing on a hard surface in the dark.
Problem: I am not satisfied to stand here until daybreak (Memory has kicked in with two pieces of information: it's night and it usually ends with sunrise)
You're not describing a new generalization. This is something you learned when you were three-years-old. Memory is not reason.
Again, non-rational is not the same as irrational.
I am often stunned that this needs to be said and how nice to read it.
So, I followed this back... Quoting T Clark
How do people generate new generalizations from observations? I do it by pouring information into my brain, letting it spin around for a while until a pattern emerges, an insight. Intuition. Generating a new premise, a hypothesis, is not a logical process. It requires that something new be created where there was nothing before. Then that new idea can be tested using empirical methods. You have to have a hypothesis before you can apply logic. Before you can be rational.
Exactly. It is as if we can manage without intuition, often. Or, it is as if everything in science, say, is reasoned and empirical. Conclusions are formed, hopefully, after testing and rational analysis, but the process of science requires intution and other non-rational processes. Often if one asserts this, one is told 'but they are fallible.' Well, sure. And of course reasoned/rational processes are also fallible. But yes, intuition is fallible but necessary. We can't weed it out and function. And then as a related issue, some intuition is better than other intuition. Some people's intuition that is is better than other people's.
Of course not. I'm asking why you would need a new generalization in the first place. I'm describing a premise from which a practical, mundane chain of reasoning may start. A situation is identified. Why would it have to be new?
A problem is presented. Information (from observation and memory) is added. Reason is applied.
Either the problem is solved or the chain of reasoning breaks down due to lack of information and the subject fails to solve the problem.
Again, non-rational is not the same as irrational.
Okay. How is a real situation in which the subject may find himself non-rational? And why does it matter whether reality follows the rules of this distinction? Suppose reality does throw up a problem that is irrational, or appears irrational to the subject.
"I am standing on a hard, level surface, surrounded by endlessly repeating reflections of myself."
Can he not still apply reasoning to the problem this situation presents?
Thank you. I'm glad it was clear to you. That was the first time I really tried to write out the point I was trying to make, after toying around with it in my mind for a long time. The description I wrote was a good example of what I was trying to describe. It was intuitively clear to me based on my experience of my own thinking process that much, most, of my thinking is not rational. Taking that intuition and putting it into words was a rational act, but in its heart, at its birth, it was not.
Exactly. It is as if we can manage without intuition, often. Or, it is as if everything in science, say, is reasoned and empirical. Conclusions are formed, hopefully, after testing and rational analysis, but the process of science requires intution and other non-rational processes. Often if one asserts this, one is told 'but they are fallible.' Well, sure. And of course reasoned/rational processes are also fallible. But yes, intuition is fallible but necessary. We can't weed it out and function. And then as a related issue, some intuition is better than other intuition. Some people's intuition that is is better than other people's.
Yes. As you note, you don't use intuition and insight as a replacement for reason. They do different things. Reason can't do what intuition does. More than that, reason knows it needs intuition. I guess maybe rationality doesn't. Maybe that's the difference. Reason has the humility to know that it doesn't provide, can't provide, all that's needed.
I'm asking why you would need a new generalization in thAe first place. I'm describing a premise from which a practical, mundane chain of reasoning may start. A situation is identified. Why would it have to be new?
Okay. How is a real situation in which the subject may find himself non-rational?
As I've noted in my last couple of posts in this thread, my part in this discussion is itself a good example of what I'm trying to describe. It has been clear to me for a long time, based on my experience of my own thinking process; i.e. intuition, insight; that much of thinking is not rational. The description I've provided is just about the first time I've tried organizing my thoughts on this subject and putting them into words. That has been what I would call a rational process, but it's roots are in experience, not reason.
How do people generate new generalizations from observations? I do it by pouring information into my brain, letting it spin around for a while until a pattern emerges, an insight. Intuition. Generating a new premise, a hypothesis, is not a logical process. It requires that something new be created where there was nothing before. Then that new idea can be tested using empirical methods. You have to have a hypothesis before you can apply logic. Before you can be rational.
Yes. Another thought is that when reasoning, there are moments of 'microintuitions'. They can be all sorts of things - moments of feeling into semantics, the 'I have checked that enough' qualia, 'it feels like some step is missing here' qualia, tiny thought experiments where one circles around a step in reasoning, quick dashes into memory looking for counterevidence and so on. All these little tweaks and checks.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 10:19#7540860 likes
Yes. Another thought is that when reasoning, there are moments of 'microintuitions'. They can be all sorts of things - moments of feeling into semantics, the 'I have checked that enough' qualia, 'it feels like some step is missing here' qualia, tiny thought experiments where one circles around a step in reasoning, quick dashes into memory looking for counterevidence and so on. All these little tweaks and checks.
Could this be described as alternating phases of syntheticity and analyticity? Analytic thinking seems to fit the bill as a kind of framework of rationality. Whereas syntheticity, which in its very nature involves leaps, seems better described as a process of reason.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 10:41#7540880 likes
So, most people will reject the conclusion of an argument if they dislike it, or if it conflicts with the body of beliefs they already hold, or if they think it would be immoral to believe such a conclusion, or if they find it an ugly belief to hold. And they will do that regardless of how good the argument is.
Note: the perfectly rational person is not necessarily going to be the perfect philosopher. For there may be truths about reality that we do not have overall reason to believe. The ideally rational person recognizes what they have overall reason to believe and believes it. That we have epistemic reason to believe x does not entail that we have overall reason to believe it.
So, the dedicated philosopher may not be perfectly rational
But standards of rationality change. Slavery was an accepted institution in ancient Greece. The slave Epictetus was a Stoic, which makes sense. But then so was Marcus Aurelius. So rejection of an argument at a social level could be the institution of a new rational standard.
Reply to Pantagruel Well, first I should say that I often use rationality and reason interchangeably. (I am not arguing they should be used that way, just confessing). Further, I am used to syntheticity/analyticity in relation to statements. Whereas intuition can be non-verbal. Again, I am confessing, not saying those nouns have to relate just to statements. I am contrasting the attempts at using language logically (and thus deduction, induction and abduction to arrive at conclusions or reject conclusions with processes that are generally not verbal, at least in a step by step process (perhaps a conclusion is spat out in word form), and also some parts of the process are black boxed. We don't know what is happening in full. This can be an intuition honed by an expert over a long time. It might be a process that someone (seems to be at least) gifted at from an early age (for some reason). And it doesn't have to be exotic stuff: detectives, art appraisers, poker players. We all use intuition all the time: when moving through crowds, when assessing people and situations, and then on down to microlevels like in the process of reading, say. But, if you want, let me know your sense of the difference between reason and rationality and also syntheticity and analyticity and perhaps I can give a competent response.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 11:06#7540920 likes
But, if you want, let me know your sense of the difference between reason and rationality and also syntheticity and analyticity and perhaps I can give a competent response.
To the extent that synthesis means linking together what is apparently unconnected it is consistent with the function of intuition for sure. The ordinary language use of reason captures my sense of it. Reason the noun is a faculty. But reasoning the verb also characterizes the thinking people use every day to solve challenges of every kind, from the most mundane to the most exotic. Rationalizing or rationalization, as was discussed, is more of a forcing of something to fit into a formalized schema, with the implication that the rationalization may not be accurate in some way. Rationalization has something of the procrustean about it. Whereas reason is more organic and practical.
t standards of rationality change. Slavery was an accepted institution in ancient Greece. The slave Epictetus was a Stoic, which makes sense. But then so was Marcus Aurelius. So rejection of an argument at a social level could be the institution of a new rational standard.
Use of the word standard could imply the difference between more and a less rational forms of thinking. Is that how you meant it? Or did you just mean to indicate different kinds of rationality?
Could this be described as alternating phases of syntheticity and analyticity? Analytic thinking seems to fit the bill as a kind of framework of rationality. Whereas syntheticity, which in its very nature involves leaps, seems better described as a process of reason.
Are you upholding the analytic/synthetic distinction here?
The description I've provided is just about the first time I've tried organizing my thoughts on this subject and putting them into words. That has been what I would call a rational process, but it's roots are in experience, not reason.
I see. We're talking about different aspects of thought.
But reasoning the verb also characterizes the thinking people use every day to solve challenges of every kind, from the most mundane to the most exotic. Rationalizing or rationalization, as was discussed, is more of a forcing of something to fit into a formalized schema, with the implication that the rationalization may not be accurate in some way. Rationalization has something of the procrustean about it. Whereas reason is more organic and practical.
So, presumably more formal types of thinking, like in a well written philosophical essay, would be rigorous reasoning.
If I look, however, at
Pantagruel:Reasoning the verb also characterizes the thinking people use every day to solve challenges of every kind, from the most mundane to the most exotic.
I would think that not only are there microintuitions ongoing in such processes, but also full out intution. At least, that's how my problem solving day goes. Rapid estimates, gut reactions to people, reading of body language in small decisions during a meeting, guesses crosscultural potential meanings (crosscultural in the broadest sense not just dealing with someone of another nationality), rapid assessments (so, qualitative) of all sorts of things, scattered in and amongst dashes of deduction and induction and abduction. So, it seems to me intuition is a tool in the reason toolbox.
Rationalization, yes, to me has a perjorative sense. But rationality does not for me.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 14:27#7541250 likes
Are you upholding the analytic/synthetic distinction here?
I'm acknowledging it, not sure what you mean by upholding it? And yes, I do think that standards of rationality vary both historically and culturally. Unless you want to proclaim some kind of transcendental standard, but then I'm not sure that would accurately represent the typical meaning of rationality.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 14:31#7541260 likes
I see divergences in reasoning and objectives emerging. At this point I would question (following @Bartricks detailed differentiation between various types of reasoning) whether this isn't indicative of the different "governing paradigms of reason" of different individuals. Something that should be taken into consideration in attempting to formulate a shared concept of reason?
Is it possible to be a criminal, and also rational, in the strictest sense of the word?
Laws defines criminals.
Speaking of a war existing between Ukraine and Russia is criminal in Russia.
So yes, you can be totally rational and a criminal. Besides, I don't think rational and ethical are synonymous.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 15:01#7541370 likes
Reply to ssu Yes, I was questioning in a more organic sense, if someone is criminally disposed, could that person ever truly be considered to be rational. Not in the sense of breaking some law which might be extremely culturally relative (like getting an abortion in a Republican state). But in the sense of pathologically stealing or harming others.
Reply to Pantagruel Well, thinking of "pathologically stealing or harming others" seems to have the idea in it that ethics can be universal and absolute. In many cases it is so.
Yet even rationality, that actions are logical depends the logical system. And the premises. After all, it's quite rational to defend yourself. And so, just where you put the line between justified defense, excessive defense or unethical defense, when a "pre-emptive attack" isn't justified. As the saying the saying goes, best defense can to be to attack.
Are you upholding the analytic/synthetic distinction here?
Joshs
I'm acknowledging it, not sure what you mean by upholding
I had this in mind:
The analytic/synthetic distinction refers to a distinction between two kinds of truth. Synthetic truths are true both because of what they mean and because of the way the world is, whereas analytic truths are true in virtue of meaning alone. Snow is white, for example, is synthetic, because it is true partly because of what it means and partly because snow has a certain color. All bachelors are unmarried, by contrast, is often claimed to be true regardless of the way the world is; it is true in virtue of meaning, or analytic. The existence of analytic truths is controversial. Philosophers who have thought they exist include Immanuel Kant, Gottlob Frege, and Rudolf Carnap. The philosopher most famous for thinking that they do not is W. O. Quine.
I would add that among those philosophers who follow Quine in rejecting the analytic/ synthetic distinction are Davidson, Sellars, Putnam, Brandom, McDowell and Rorty.
More on Quine from Wiki
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a paper by analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951. According to University of Sydney professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy".[1] The paper is an attack on two central aspects of the logical positivists' philosophy: the first being the analyticsynthetic distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts; the other being reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms that refer exclusively to immediate experience.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 15:25#7541440 likes
Reply to Joshs More so I am thinking about analyticity as a mode of thought (leading to analytic knowledge). And syntheticity. Aligning with deduction and induction (where induction presumably includes intuitive elements, as mentioned). Whether are not there are analytic truths, it is still possible to think analytically or deductively. Reasoning in the mode of the deductive-nomological model I guess you could say.
Bret BernhoftNovember 05, 2022 at 15:55#7541540 likes
Also, I don't think thinking is strategic. I'm not even sure what that means. Certainly a lot of our thinking is not goal oriented.
Thinking, from the perspective of an individual is (IMO) almost always strategic and goal driven. Perhaps the objective(s) of the thinking being done aren't always about outer world goals, or immediate ones for that matter. I tend to view the mind (and the associated thinking, however seemingly mundane or counterproductive) as being more of a long-term planning module within the human apparatus.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 16:05#7541560 likes
I tend to view the mind (and the associated thinking, however seemingly mundane or counterproductive) as being more of a long-term planning module within the human apparatus.
I am very much on board with this. I see all of our thought (that is not trivially practically oriented - thirsty, get a drink) as being driven by long-range long-term goals which then realize through subsidiary objectives. Part of the problem in a reductive-causal analysis of action is that, yes, you can have some set of primary environmental conditions that would account for an action, but the underlying motives are going to be subject to subtle (or substantial) changes as the nature of the long term goal evolves in conjunction with ongoing feedback. I get in the car to go to work. But I am going to work because I have an overarching goal. Maybe to buy a new car. But if I change an even higher level goal - from magnificent consumerism to environmental harmony - then maybe I will sell my car and find a different way to work.
Agent SmithNovember 05, 2022 at 16:13#7541580 likes
As far as I can tell, from the little that I know, we're rational creatures and inshallah we shall remain so for as long as possible ... for our own sake!
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 16:15#7541590 likes
Yes. Another thought is that when reasoning, there are moments of 'microintuitions'. They can be all sorts of things - moments of feeling into semantics, the 'I have checked that enough' qualia, 'it feels like some step is missing here' qualia, tiny thought experiments where one circles around a step in reasoning, quick dashes into memory looking for counterevidence and so on. All these little tweaks and checks.
Agreed. Reason and rationality don't have to be done formally, in writing, with little checklists. We can do it on the fly. Did I say this before? - Maybe the difference between reason and rationality is that reason welcomes intuition and insight into the process.
I had not heard of "abduction" used in the context of logic before, so I looked it up. What I found was interesting and relevant. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?
In the philosophical literature, the term abduction is used in two related but different senses. In both senses, the term refers to some form of explanatory reasoning. However, in the historically first sense, it refers to the place of explanatory reasoning in generating hypotheses, while in the sense in which it is used most frequently in the modern literature it refers to the place of explanatory reasoning in justifying hypotheses. In the latter sense, abduction is also often called Inference to the Best Explanation.
This entry is exclusively concerned with abduction in the modern sense, although there is a supplement on abduction in the historical sense, which had its origin in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce
The term abduction was coined by Charles Sanders Peirce in his work on the logic of science. He introduced it to denote a type of non-deductive inference that was different from the already familiar inductive type. It is a common complaint that no coherent picture emerges from Peirces writings on abduction. (Though perhaps this is not surprising, given that he worked on abduction throughout his career, which spanned a period of more than fifty years. For a concise yet thorough account of the development of Peirces thoughts about abduction, see Fann 1970.) Yet it is clear that, as Peirce understood the term, abduction did not quite mean what it is currently taken to mean (see Campos 2011 and McAuliffe 2015). One main difference between his conception and the modern one is that, whereas according to the latter, abduction belongs to what the logical empiricists called the context of justificationthe stage of scientific inquiry in which we are concerned with the assessment of theoriesfor Peirce abduction had its proper place in the context of discovery, the stage of inquiry in which we try to generate theories which may then later be assessed. As he says, [a]bduction is the process of forming explanatory hypotheses. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea (CP 5.172); elsewhere he says that abduction encompasses all the operations by which theories and conceptions are engendered (CP 5.590). Deduction and induction, then, come into play at the later stage of theory assessment: deduction helps to derive testable consequences from the explanatory hypotheses that abduction has helped us to conceive, and induction finally helps us to reach a verdict on the hypotheses, where the nature of the verdict is dependent on the number of testable consequences that have been verified. (As an aside, it is to be noted that Gerhard Schurz has recently defended a view of abduction that is again very much in the Peircean spirit. On this view, the crucial function of a pattern of abduction consists in its function as a search strategy which leads us, for a given kind of scenario, in a reasonable time to a most promising explanatory conjecture which is then subject to further test (Schurz 2008, 205). The paper is also of interest because of the useful typology of patterns of abduction that it puts forth.)
As Harry Frankfurt (1958) has noted, however, the foregoing view is not as easy to make sense of as might at first appear. Abduction is supposed to be part of the logic of science, but what exactly is logical about inventing explanatory hypotheses? According to Peirce (CP 5.189), abduction belongs to logic because it can be given a schematic characterization, to wit, the following:
The surprising fact, C, is observed.
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course.
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.
But Frankfurt rightly remarks that this is not an inference leading to any new idea. After all, the new ideathe explanatory hypothesis Amust have occurred to one before one infers that there is reason to suspect that A is true, for A already figures in the second premise.
Frankfurt then goes on to argue that a number of passages in Peirces work suggest an understanding of abduction not so much as a process of inventing hypotheses but rather as one of adopting hypotheses, where the adoption of the hypothesis is not as being true or verified or confirmed, but as being a worthy candidate for further investigation. On this understanding, abduction could still be thought of as being part of the context of discovery. It would work as a kind of selection function, or filter, determining which of the hypotheses that have been conceived in the stage of discovery are to pass to the next stage and be subjected to empirical testing. The selection criterion is that there must be a reason to suspect that the hypothesis is true, and we will have such a reason if the hypothesis makes whichever observed facts we are interested in explaining a matter of course. This would indeed make better sense of Peirces claim that abduction is a logical operation.
Nevertheless, Frankfurt ultimately rejects this proposal as well. Given, he says, that there may be infinitely many hypotheses that account for a given fact or set of factswhich Peirce acknowledgedit can hardly be a sufficient condition for the adoption of a hypothesis (in the above sense) that its truth would make that fact or set of facts a matter of course.
I bolded text I think is especially relevant.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 17:09#7541830 likes
Reply to T Clark No but often it seems that very different perspectives on the mind do suggest that some people do have fundamentally different experiences of thought.
No but often it seems that very different perspectives on the mind do suggest that some people do have fundamentally different experiences of thought.
I think that's true, but I don't think a difference in the experience means there is a difference in the mechanisms or processes of thought among different people.
PantagruelNovember 05, 2022 at 17:20#7541870 likes
I think that's true, but I don't think a difference in the experience means there is a difference in the mechanisms or processes of thought among different people.
Ok. But if experience is empirically contingent, then there must be some empirical differentiator? Even if it is like the same light shining on two differently coloured plates. The plates absorb different spectrums of the light, so are experiencing very different aspects of the same thing. (Which reflects in the colours they reflect.)
Ok. But if experience is empirically contingent, then there must be some empirical differentiator? Even if it is like the same light shining on two differently coloured plates. The plates absorb different spectrums of the light, so are experiencing very different aspects of the same thing. (Which reflects in the colours they reflect.)
People are aware of their own experiences at different levels and in different ways. I don't think that means the processes themselves are different. If you and I look at exactly the same image under the same conditions we are likely to have somewhat different experiences.
Thinking, from the perspective of an individual is (IMO) almost always strategic and goal driven.
I don't see that as true in my case. Based on my experience of my own thinking, much of it is wandering and playful. Curiosity leads me off in directions with no obvious utility. It's possible to let thinking take you where it wants to go with no clear goal. That's the kind of thinking that's the most fun. Thinking is, or at least can be, play.
But standards of rationality change. Slavery was an accepted institution in ancient Greece. The slave Epictetus was a Stoic, which makes sense. But then so was Marcus Aurelius. So rejection of an argument at a social level could be the institution of a new rational standard
I don't understand what you're saying. My claim is that to be rational is to be reason-responsive. that is, it is to recognize and respond to reasons to do things and reasons to believe things.
But you have said something quite different and that does not challenge what I have said, whether it is true or not.
Let's say that the character of Reason has changed over time such that, other things being equal, what we have reason to do today in circumstances S we would not have had reason to do 1,000 years ago in exactly the same circumstances.
How does that challenge the idea that being rational involves being reason-responsive? A highly rational person today would get the impression, today, that they have reason to do X in circumstances S. But if they had been around 1000 years ago in identical circumstances they would have had the impression that they have reason to do Y in circumstances S.
So it seems to me that you are mixing two quite different topics. There is the question of how stable the rational aspect to reality is (the aspect that 'being rational' involves recognizing and responding to). And then there is what it is to be rational.
For an analogy: imagine you had asked 'what is it to see things?' And someone offers an answer. It is no response to say "but things people saw 1,000 years ago they do not see today".
I have always thought of 'rational' as related to 'ratio', which suggests comparison, measurement, determination and balance.
A rational or reasonable conclusion is a balanced conclusion. The tricky thing about intuition is that we don't know whether these processes of comparison, measurement etc.,have gone on subconsciously.
The tricky thing about intuition is that we don't know whether these processes of comparison, measurement etc.,have gone on subconsciously.
I don't know if you saw the excerpts from the SEP about abduction I posted in a response to ByLaw previously. The issue discussed in those texts is the distinction between generating hypotheses and validating them. Yes, intuition might miss something important. Brainstorming is a process of quickly tossing out ideas without trying to exclude those that probably won't work. The process is meant to generate a lot of hypotheses for further testing. That's where reason/rationality comes in.
Rationality and irrationality are not mutually exclusive, they can exist at the same place and at the same time. Someone can be rational to an irrational extent. Someone else can be irrational but express themselves perfectly rationally (that's what I aim for). My interest in rationality is related to this idea of "iron cage of rationality" which is about social control. When I read the discussion topic 'questioning rationality' I automatically think of becoming free, not necessarily pondering 'what is rational?'. Was Socrates rational for challenging ideas that could get him killed by an irrational society, or does rationality always correspond to the society and its constructs that we live in? In the latter case Socrates was irrational, but super-ironically became the rational example of Western Civilization. It is a complicated question that I wont solve. My bias is that rationality is socially constructed, Socrates was irrational, and of course, that irony prevailed.
Reply to T Clark I'll have a read. I am familiar with the concept of abduction from reading of and about Peirce. I think of it as the imaginative generation of hypotheses. I think there must be a rational element in there, though, since I imagine the abductive inferences to best explanation must possess some plausible causal relationship with what is purporting to be explained.
I wasn't so much concerned about intuition missing anything, but more about the implicit rational thinking that might have been going on sub-consciously when we find that an intuitive response has suddenly appeared in our consciousness.
I wasn't so much concerned about intuition missing anything, but more about the implicit rational thinking that might have been going on sub-consciously when we find that an intuitive response has suddenly appeared in our consciousness.
This comment took me by surprise, even startled me a bit. You are proposing that intuition includes some sort of secret logic we are not aware of. My first reaction is that the idea is absurd, but I'll try to give a more thoughtful, perhaps reasoned, even rational response than just that.
I see two possibilities. 1) There is no secret rational component to intuition. And 2) It doesn't matter one way or the other. Let's start with 1. In my experience, intuition works by making non-rational connections between unlike ideas. That's consistent with reading I've done that claims that fundamental mental processes work by making analogical, metaphorical connections rather than linear ones. I'm not capable of taking that argument any further at this point, so we'll leave it at that.
On to 2. It seems clear to me that rational processes are ones we have to be conscious, aware, of. They have to be put into a language, possibly mathematics or logic. It is the essence of reason that it has to be transparent. You cannot claim to be rational if you can't provide a description of the chain of logic you've followed to reach a conclusion for others to examine and validate. Again in my experience, rational evaluation is something I have to apply to a hypothesis after I come up with it.
Maybe the difference between reason and rationality is that reason welcomes intuition and insight into the process.
I tend to react to the words this way also. Rationality seems focused, even if it is on the fly or just in the head, on (intended to be) logical verbal processes, whereas reason seems to mean something processes of good thinking, whatever they are like. I don't tend to keep the terms separate and I think others will not have this way of separating them, but I do have a dash of that tendency myself.
The process is meant to generate a lot of hypotheses for further testing. That's where reason/rationality comes in.
Though I want to add that those rational processes of further testing need to use intution right through. They are not just intuition, but the process relies on it.
PantagruelNovember 06, 2022 at 11:01#7543250 likes
I will admit that my own approach to the reasonable-rational problem relies heavily on exemplary usages in ordinary language. I don't see a problem with this. Examples are good precisely as exemplary of common experience. Versus highly specialized, technical, neologized or otherwise contrived terminology, which loses in generality what it gains in specificity. That's another issue.
Continuing this approach, having a reason versus having a rationale. A reason is offered as causally sufficient and self-evident. I used metal to build this wheel instead of wood so it will last longer. A rationale is an internally coherent explanatory framework which is invoked precisely when there is no exemplary reason. I do not know where I dropped my watch, so I chose to search for it under the streetlamp because there is more light there. A rationale is invoked as a reason when no more specific reason exists.
If thinking is strategic, is it therefore also rational? Is it possible to be a criminal, and also rational, in the strictest sense of the word? What about reasonable?
I think it is possible to be criminal and also rational in the case that the law is irrational.
Which is entirely possible as laws are ammended because they recognise they didn't consider a specific situation whereby one is deemed criminal under current legal constraints but the general populous empathises with them on the grounds that they believe the persons intentions were good and their options to minimise harm were not available to them legally.
For example, imagine a person whos loved one is severely depressed, and nothing legally available to them appears to be potent enough to rid that depression. They're sure their loved one will take their own life if no one does anything fast and effective soon. They're desperate to save them.
So that person considers say some drug that they researched is effective against depression - perhaps a hallucinogen or cannabis. So they buy it despite the fact that they're aware its illegal in their country.
It has the desired effect, and their loved one appears to be improving. So they continue to purchase it. On the third instance they're caught and taken to court. They plead guilty but only because they were doing everything and anything necessary to spare their loved one from suicide.
In this case is it really fair to consider them a criminal and penalise them thus? Or ought the law be ammended based on empirical evidence and rationality?
In my opinion law does try it's best to uphold justice, but like any human institution it is not without flaw. And therefore should always be open to improvement.
I don't tend to keep the terms separate and I think others will not have this way of separating them, but I do have a dash of that tendency myself.
Yes. As I noted, that difficulty in separating the concepts is the reason I didn't start a discussion like this one previously. As it is though, this has turned out to be a really good one for me. I've really been able to make what I think clearer to myself.
Though I want to add that those rational processes of further testing need to use intution right through. They are not just intuition, but the process relies on it.
Yes. Reason is an iterative process. Rough and tumble.
Continuing this approach, having a reason versus having a rationale. A reason is offered as causally sufficient and self-evident. I used metal to build this wheel instead of wood so it will last longer. A rationale is an internally coherent explanatory framework which is invoked precisely when there is no exemplary reason. I do not know where I dropped my watch, so I chose to search for it under the streetlamp because there is more light there. A rationale is invoked as a reason when no more specific reason exists.
Your example is a good example of the problem with making a definitive distinction between the two concepts. I think calling "I used metal to build this wheel instead of wood so it will last longer" a rationale would be just as accurate as calling it a reason.
I think it is possible to be criminal and also rational in the case that the law is irrational.
Why does it matter whether or not the crime is rational? Seems to me that robbing a bank so I can be rich could be just as rational as buying illegal drugs to help my friend. Which is not to say they are morally equivalent.
Which is not to say they are morally equivalent.
now
They're not morally equivalent which is exactly what laws are based on. Giving to charity and murdering 300 people are also not morally equivalent and yes the law has something to say about the distinction.
So whats your point?
Moral is about helping others not to suffer not serving yourself for your own benefit to the detriment of others (all the people that suffer because you robbed their savings in the bank) .
Both may be rational on a personal basis but they're not both ethical (on a collective basis).
Hence what is rational to save another person from suicide (a selfless act ie risking your own wellbeing for another's) is ethically higher than risking others wellbeing for your own.
The two examples are entirely different so your fixation on the fact that they are both rational in relativity to the person acting completely ignore ethics - what's more prudent to do.
L'éléphantNovember 06, 2022 at 17:23#7544140 likes
If thinking is strategic, is it therefore also rational? Is it possible to be a criminal, and also rational, in the strictest sense of the word? What about reasonable?
I was thinking of a criminal. Who can have high situational-awareness and make complex plans. But is that sufficient to rationality?
I'm late in the game, and lots of rational thinking on this thread.
But my response to the above is:
Yes, one can be strategic (based on how you define it) but not rational. Sociopaths can be highly strategic and able to make complex plans, but they are not rational. Their thinking patterns are done in a vacuum, without regard to the people around them, their own situation or location, or their environment. Not sure if you've heard or read about a brief comic illustration of the mind of a sociopath. Here's a version of that example:
A man attended his uncle's funeral and saw a beautiful woman among the mourners. Knowing nothing else of the woman, but wanting to see her again, he killed his aunt.
You are proposing that intuition includes some sort of secret logic we are not aware of.
Not exactly, I am just saying that rational thought processes may be going on that we are not aware of. There doesn't seem to be any logical contradiction or impossibility in that conjecture.
I see two possibilities. 1) There is no secret rational component to intuition. And 2) It doesn't matter one way or the other. Let's start with 1. In my experience, intuition works by making non-rational connections between unlike ideas. That's consistent with reading I've done that claims that fundamental mental processes work by making analogical, metaphorical connections rather than linear ones. I'm not capable of taking that argument any further at this point, so we'll leave it at that.
I agree that intuition probably works by associating images, impressions and concepts. Alchemy, astrology, acupuncture, hermeticism and homeopathy are some examples of ways of intuitively associating qualities of elements, things and processes via perceived similarities or affinities. There is a logic to this, which is not empirically based in our modern scientific understanding, but I would call it rational nonetheless,
On to 2. It seems clear to me that rational processes are ones we have to be conscious, aware, of. They have to be put into a language, possibly mathematics or logic. It is the essence of reason that it has to be transparent.
I see no reason to believe that rational thought processes must be executed consciously. If the brain/mind can do strict logic or any other form of associating ideas consciously,why could it not carry on with such processes in the absence of conscious awareness. I mean, maybe it can't do that; but if that were so we would need evidence and an argument to establish it.
Not exactly, I am just saying that rational thought processes may be going on that we are not aware of. There doesn't seem to be any logical contradiction or impossibility in that conjecture.
I see no reason to believe that rational thought processes must be executed consciously. If the brain/mind can do strict logic or any other form of associating ideas consciously,why could it not carry on with such processes in the absence of conscious awareness. I mean, maybe it can't do that; but if that were so we would need evidence and an argument to establish it.
Well, now we've raised the question of whether rational thought processes have to be conscious. I vote yes, but I don't have a definitive argument to back that up.
I agree that intuition probably works by associating images, impressions and concepts. Alchemy, astrology, acupuncture, hermeticism and homeopathy are some examples of ways of intuitively associating qualities of elements, things and processes via perceived similarities or affinities. There is a logic to this, which is not empirically based in our modern scientific understanding, but I would call it rational nonetheless,
You start out associating intuition with discredited ways of knowing - alchemy, astrology, etc. I don't understand that. Intuition is not something esoteric or mysterious. It's an everyday process our minds use all the time. Then you describe those intuitive processes as a kind of rationality. It seems like you are identifying rationality as anything the mind does to collect information or solve problems.
You start out associating intuition with discredited ways of knowing - alchemy, astrology, etc. I don't understand that. Intuition is not something esoteric or mysterious. It's an everyday process our minds use all the time. Then you describe those intuitive processes as a kind of rationality. It seems like you are identifying rationality as anything the mind does to collect information or solve problems.
I'm not trying to diminish intuition. I think it is an imaginative faculty. Those "discredited" (by some) ways of understanding I believe are based on imaginative associations that are intuitively thought to "make sense" or "feel right". I also think there is always an implicit logic in what ties the associations that are made together. For example Mars is the planet associates with the God of war, (and hence we get the word 'martial') because it appears red and red is the colour of blood, which it seems obvious to associate with war.
So I am not claiming that these processes of reasoning are deductively valid or empirically based, but they are different ways of balancing, measuring and associating things which have their own kinds of logic.
The medieval and ancients minds reasoned in these kinds of different ways than modern empirical and deductive minds do. That said, there are still plenty, perhaps even a good majority, of people alive today who think in those 'old' ways.
The other point is that whatever kinds of reasoning a human being consciously deploys to deliberate and arrive at reasoned conclusions, whether they be ancient or modern, in cases where a conclusion is reached "instantly", as we understand it, "via intuition", I still see no reason to deny that these processes of reasoning might go on without conscious awareness. I am not affirming that such reasoning does or can go on unconsciously either; I don't actually have an opinion on the matter.
So I am not claiming that these processes of reasoning are deductively valid or empirically based, but they are different ways of balancing, measuring and associating things which have their own kinds of logic.
Seems like you are changing the meaning of the word "logic" in mid-discussion. We can leave it at that. If we go on we'll get into more and more nitpicking which I don't think will lead to a satisfactory resolution for either of us. This has been a really good discussion.
Seems like you are changing the meaning of the word "logic" in mid-discussion.
Just a final question to consider. In cultures existing prior to, or unaffected by, our current conception of empiric and propositional logic-based reasoning, would you say there was no distinction between rational and irrational thinking, or reasonableness and unreasonableness?
Answer if you wish, or not. In any case I agree it's been a very good discussion. :smile:
In cultures existing prior to, or unaffected by, our current conception of empiric and propositional logic-based reasoning, would you say there was no distinction between rational and irrational thinking, or reasonableness and unreasonableness?
That's a great question and I know it's directed at @T Clark. If rationality is using knowledge to achieve goals, then probably. But there is always a foundational set of values by which a culture measures itself. Many people believe that reason is synonymous with The Age of Reason - what we call knowledge and the practices this engenders must be arrived at without superstition and with no logical fallacies. At one end of the continuum this is probably scientism.
That's a great question and I know it's directed at T Clark. If rationality is using knowledge to achieve goals, then probably. But there is always a foundational set of values by which a culture measures itself. Many people believe that reason is synonymous with The Age of Reason - what we call knowledge and the practices this engenders must be arrived at without superstition and with no logical fallacies. At one end of the continuum this is probably scientism.
"If rationality is using knowledge to achieve goals"; that sounds right, and I would include reasoning from existing knowledge/ understanding to enable the drawing of novel conclusions in that.
I agree there are always basic sets of values that cultures understand themselves in terms of. I am not so fond of a narrow conception of reason that understands it as being only that which accords with our Enlightenment and subsequent conceptions of rationality. I think "no logical fallacies" is right, although I think it pays to remember that inductive and abductive ways of reasoning are not bound by deductive criteria of validity. Previous cultures may have held what we would call superstitions as foundational premises upon which to reason and arrive at the "inferences to the best explanations" they were able to derive.
PantagruelNovember 07, 2022 at 01:13#7545380 likes
Sociopaths can be highly strategic and able to make complex plans, but they are not rational
This is pretty much where I was heading. Do you think that is just a congenital or organic deficiency? Or did they lose or renounce the ability to be rational?
PantagruelNovember 07, 2022 at 01:15#7545420 likes
Just a final question to consider. In cultures existing prior to, or unaffected by, our current conception of empiric and propositional logic-based reasoning, would you say there was no distinction between rational and irrational thinking, or reasonableness and unreasonableness?
Great question. A history of reason would make an interesting read. :chin:
Previous cultures may have held what we would call superstitions as foundational premises upon which to reason and arrive at the "inferences to the best explanations" they were able to derive.
And this makes it interesting to me. How is a standard of reasonableness determined if superstition and magic are your compass points? I remember sitting with a staunch, right-wing Catholic in a cafe one afternoon. In walked an Islamic family. The Catholic gentleman clucked, shook his head and uttered 'Primitives!' Here's the question - is the secular humanist who regards both my Catholic fella and the Islamic family and their worldviews with dismay any more 'entitled' to his values driven reasoning here?
Just a final question to consider. In cultures existing prior to, or unaffected by, our current conception of empiric and propositional logic-based reasoning, would you say there was no distinction between rational and irrational thinking, or reasonableness and unreasonableness?
I don't mind trying to answer, but I don't have much insight to offer. To start, I'll say again - irrational and non-rational are not the same thing. Intuition is not irrational, it's non-rational. I don't know what happened in ancient cultures. Julien Jaynes in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" claimed that consciousness did not develop in humans until about 4,000 years ago. I've always been skeptical of that, but I don't know for sure. As I noted before, I think rational thought is probably not possible without self-awareness. If Jaynes and I are both right, I guess that would mean that there was no rational thought until about 4,000 years ago.
Julien Jaynes in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" claimed that consciousness did not develop in humans until about 4,000 years ago.
If rationality is using knowledge to achieve goals, then probably.
If all it takes to be rational is using knowledge to achieve goals, then animals are rational. Any mental process that may lead to action is rational. That takes all the meaning out of the word. It's certainly not how we've been using the word up till now in this discussion.
Jaynes defines consciousness as "the human ability to introspect." I interpret that to mean that consciousness is self-awareness - the capacity to think abstractly about ourselves. Does that answer your question?
HAVARD GAZETTE: Can you define rationality in a sentence?
PINKER: I define it as the use of knowledge to attain a goal, where knowledge, according to the standard philosophers definition, is justified true belief.
Perhaps this latter bit I left out precludes the animal kingdom.
I define it as the use of knowledge to attain a goal, where knowledge, according to the standard philosophers definition, is justified true belief.
Well, I think justified true belief as an explanation of knowledge is wrong-headed, so that doesn't resolve anything for me. No, I don't want to talk about JTB.
Reply to T Clark I think @joshs would see Pinker as part of an old problem in his fairly traditional notion of and advocacy of reason.
I am happy with Pinker's definition but I recognize its problems. Is not part of the issue that some of us see reason as a superior pathway to truth (small 't') - and let's not get onto that one either.
I am happy with Pinker's definition but I recognize its problems. Is not part of the issue that some of us see reason as superior pathway to truth (small 't') - and let's not get onto that one either.
I think we're coming up against the problem that we never did define what "rational" means back at the beginning. For me, it means a systematic search for knowledge and understanding following a formal system such as logic, the rules of which are specified in advance. It's probably too late to go into that now.
[...] we never did define what "rational" means back at the beginning. For me, it means a systematic search for knowledge and understanding following a formal system such as logic, the rules of which are specified in advance.
To be forthright: First off, as a matter of opinion, we disagree on what the term rational ought to refer to. I for one believe it should be roughly described as the ability to discern and apply reasons (like causes and motives) and comparisons (with ratios as one example among humans) for the sake of optimally fulfilling goals, be these needs (like physical sustenance so as to maintain physical health) or desires (with improved eudemonia as one example sometimes spoken of by philosophers). But, I grant, my definition does not need to be strictly applicable to only humans, and I get that many dont want to ascribe rationality to any lesser life form. Be this as it may.
An observation based on the quoted definition of rational:
So called primitive people that lack rationality as just defined (and which have not been intruded nor in any other significant way influenced by westerners: certain people in the Amazonian forests and Inuit people as two examples) have lived in mutual benefit with their natural environment for as long as theyve been known to be, resulting in the preservation of a healthy ecology in which they subsist.
We westerners, who as a grouping arguably represent the apex of this rationality as defined, are deteriorating our natural environment to the point of causing the sixth mass extinction, environmental collapse, and our own demise as a people - and this, for the most part, without giving a hoot.
I know theres bound to be (this from at least some person somewhere), but in assuming no indignantly emotive attempts to rationalize these two just stated facts:
If the cultures in which (your sense of) rationality prevails happen to callously and obliviously bring about the steady obliteration of the inhabitable planet - and, via rational inference, of themselves as a peoples in the process - while those cultures devoid of rationality (as you've defined it) do no such thing, whats one to make of rationalitys value?
I dont know, your present definition leaves me with a topsy-turvy feel in this context.
Agent SmithNovember 07, 2022 at 05:16#7545840 likes
First off, as a matter of opinion, we disagree on what the term rational ought to refer to. I for one believe it should be roughly described as the ability to discern and apply reasons (like causes and motives) and comparisons (with ratios as one example among humans) for the sake of optimally fulfilling goals, be these needs (like physical sustenance so as to maintain physical health) or desires (with improved eudemonia as one example sometimes spoken of by philosophers)./quote]
It's not a question of what "rational" ought to refer to, it's what it actually does refer to. It doesn't mean just good, effective thinking, at least not in a philosophical context. It has a specific meaning and it's not the one you've given above. It's closer to the one that I've given, although we could argue the specifics.
[quote="javra;754582"]If the cultures in which (your sense of) rationality prevails happen to callously and obliviously bring about the steady obliteration of the inhabitable planet - and, via rational inference, of themselves as a peoples in the process - while those cultures devoid of rationality (as you've defined it) do no such thing, whats one to make of rationalitys value?
Again, it's not my sense of what it means, it's what it actually does mean. You propose a more holistic approach to knowledge and understanding, which I endorse. Rationality is reductionist. Logic only applies to propositions, statements of fact. Question - How many true propositions does it take to paint an accurate picture of reality. Answer - Trick question. Reality can't be described effectively with any number of propositions.
I think we're coming up against the problem that we never did define what "rational" means back at the beginning.
Probably right. It might even be instructive to identify that which is irrational. If belief in god is rational (and not everyone agrees) is belief that you are going to burn in hell because you are a sinner irrational?
I don't think it is easy to have a discussion like this without recognising that reason belongs to a web of interrelated ideas and values and any substantive discussion will lead us irrevocably to matters of truth and reality.
I don't think it is easy to have a discussion like this without recognising that reason belongs to a web of interrelated ideas and values and any deep discussion will lead us irrevocably to matters of truth and reality.
As I noted in my response to @javra, above, I don't think rationality is really capable of dealing with "a web of interrelated ideas and values."
As I noted in my response to javra, above, I don't think rationality is really capable of dealing with "a web of interrelated ideas and values."
I struggle to see how it wouldn't if we're exploring reason as a practice to guide human behaviour and choices. I'm not sure how we understand the rational/irrational in isolation without locating this within a set of values and situational exigencies? Maybe I'm missing something.
Again, it's not my sense of what it means, [the description of "rationality" which T Clark previously posted is] what it actually does mean.
For the record: Best I could do in finding a good reference for what rationality means is this. The SEP section of this article lists seven possible meanings of rationality (without claiming them to be exhaustive), none of which appear to me to coincide with what you claim the official, or formal, meaning of rationality is. Particularly, your claim that it be "a systematic search for knowledge and understanding following a formal system such as logic, the rules of which are specified in advance".
If you could provide some reference for the meaning of rationality as you've specified it, I could then learn something new and be more in the know, so to speak.
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ps. If interested, a different SEP article on rationality that touches on the topic of this thread. From the first paragraph of the article:
"This thesis appears to threaten the rational authority of morality. It seems possible that acting morally on some occasion might not be a suitable means to an agents ends. If so, then according to this thesis, it would not be irrational for her to refuse to act morally on such an occasion."
PantagruelNovember 07, 2022 at 16:45#7547470 likes
Quite by accident I came across this bit in Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy) that nicely contrasts reason in its practical versus its rationalistic guises. It seems to fit with some of the themes that have been emerging. I think I may reread this next. (bolded by me)
"Reason" as a faculty separate from experience, introducing us to a superior region of universal truths begins now to strike us as remote, uninteresting and unimportant. Reason, as a Kantian faculty that introduces generality and regularity into experience, strikes us more and more as superfluousthe unnecessary creation of men addicted to traditional formalism and to elaborate terminology....
...reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the pattern of science, and used in the creation of social arts; it has something to do. It liberates man from the bondage of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into custom. It projects a better future and assists man in its realization. And its operation is always subject to test in experience. The plans which are formed, the principles which man projects as guides of reconstructive action, are not dogmas. They are hypotheses to be worked out in practice, and to be rejected, corrected and expanded as they fail or succeed in giving our present experience the guidance it requires....
In contrast with this experimental and re-adjusting intelligence, it must be said that Reason as employed by historic rationalism has tended to carelessness, conceit, irresponsibility, and rigidityin short absolutism.
edit: the notion of the bridging of the nomothetic-scientific and the social-hermeutic (which is how Dewey characterizes reason here) is central to Understanding and Explanation by Apel, which I'm currently reading.
Reply to T Clark Wait a second. My take so far is that, as of yet, there isn't a settled philosophical definition of what "rational" means. Mine fully included.
They are hypotheses to be worked out in practice, and to be rejected, corrected and expanded as they fail or succeed in giving our present experience the guidance it requires....
"Reason" as a faculty separate from experience, introducing us to a superior region of universal truths begins now to strike us as remote, uninteresting and unimportant.
Possibly what I was getting at when I said that reason can be better understood in the context of situational exigencies.
PantagruelNovember 07, 2022 at 19:13#7547930 likes
Reply to Pantagruel Reason comes in several flavors. We talk about reason being the process of drawing logical inferences. We talk about reason as being the 'antidote' to superstition and magical thinking, as in the Enlightenment tradition. We talk about pure reason (a priori) as opposed to practical reason (working things out). As a method, reason is generally seen as a superior approach for establishing truth. What would Feyerabend say?
Much of my understanding of reason comes from the old secular humanist clash with religion, where reason is seen as being in opposition to faith, as a 'more reliable' tool for guiding life choices. I'm sure an anti foundationalist position like postmodernism would consider reason to be a kind of fetishized relic of an approach fading in relevance. But I guess if you are arguing against the use of reason you are using reason... My cursory familiarity with Richard Rorty suggests that he thought reason could be replaced with acts of creative imagination - perhaps this was also Nietzsche's approach?
DingoJonesNovember 07, 2022 at 20:46#7548210 likes
It would be real swell if all discussions on this forum were like his one, nice job comrades that was a worthwhile read.
Thanks.
L'éléphantNovember 08, 2022 at 03:29#7549140 likes
This is pretty much where I was heading. Do you think that is just a congenital or organic deficiency? Or did they lose or renounce the ability to be rational?
On the question of whether sociopaths are born, not made, I believe if we looked at the historical evidence, most, if not all, of them showed signs that it's always been in them, which means they were born with that trait. Ted Bundy, as an example, at one point tried to convince the public that he wasn't, that he got to be that way because of his own doing -- obsession with sexual violence on film. He claimed he grew up in a normal family environment. etc. This is all bullshit. (though it was true that he didn't suffer from abuse, or that he grew up in a normal family) If you looked at the footages of his capture, when he was being moved from one location to another, or just walking to the courtroom escorted by the police, you'd see how he didn't have command of his mind. Somehow, this man, during his interview, wanted so much to show a side of him that's sophisticated and educated. A far cry from the irrationality of how he victimized those women.
I think it is possible to be criminal and also rational in the case that the law is irrational.
Benj96
From that I infer that in cases where a law is rational, you think criminal acts are not rational. I was disagreeing that is necessarily true.
Agreed. Rational does not necessarily include ethical. But since when each adjective (or noun) is used, we tend to mean an ideal trait: Good, Beautiful and True blended. So, it is bothersome to think of a rational criminal. But I can't see any reason not to, for example, distinguish between an extremely effective, rational criminal and an dull witted one who gets caught all the time.
Reply to T Clark I'm finding some of the discussion odd. That's not a cover for saying people are wrong. For example, when intuition was being discussed at one point it seemed to be related to ontology. Intuitions of first principles or something. As opposed to how I generally think of it in relation to direct appraisals: reading other poker players, realizing that it is likely a crime is now occuring in the bank you are in even though you see no criminal but rather through reading body language, art experts detecting instantly a counterfeit painting. As experienced, generally, fast processes where a conclusion is reached without a rational verbal process. (there may be unconscious processes that are rational, but often this needs to be blackboxed).
Also that rationality or reason includes specific positions. Like if you believe in God and argue that God exists or cannot be ruled out or any other what was called pre-Enlightenment beliefs are part of your argument or conclusions, then it is not reason/rationality. I think that is a poor use of the terms. These are process words. Nouns describing what one does, not what one believes or concludes. I think that's a better use. Or was Newton not reasoning because he had non-relative space time in his conclusions? For example. Because he was wrong or partly wrong or had incorrect metaphysical assumptions. (not even mentioning his other beliefs)
I suppose I am also saying that one can reason one's way to an incorrect conclusion. Or one we do not know if it is correct or not. Or two people can be reasoning together and disagree, or be being rational and yet have opposed opinions. It's not a content issue.
Otherwise we then later find that oh, he wasn't reasoning because it turns out he was wrong. Or, oh she wasn't being rational because it turns out she was wrong.
I don't think that's a good way to use these terms.
This then also leaves room for non-rational processes that might be useful.
when intuition was being discussed at one point it seemed to be related to ontology. Intuitions of first principles or something. As opposed to how I generally think of it in relation to direct appraisals: reading other poker players, realizing that it is likely a crime is now occuring in the bank you are in even though you see no criminal but rather through reading body language, art experts detecting instantly a counterfeit painting. As experienced, generally, fast processes where a conclusion is reached without a rational verbal process.
My understanding of intuition comes from introspection, reading some eastern philosophy, and 30 years handling and using data as an engineer, not from any specific scientific source. Given that context, here's how I see it. From the minute we are born, probably earlier, we make observations, take in information. Very little of it comes from any kind of formal learning and very little of it is easily expressible in propositions, which are really the only things that formal rationality, logic, can process. We don't learn the answer to a bunch of true/false questions. We learn, build, a model of the world and how it works. I am very aware of the model I carry around in my head and how I use it in dealing with the world and making decisions.
For me, intuition is just using the model of reality we all carry around with us to evaluate new information and make decisions. It doesn't supersede reason. As I've noted previously in this thread, intuitive knowledge comes first and can then be validated using rational methods if the situation requires it.
Very little of it comes from any kind of formal learning and very little of it is easily expressible in propositions,
Ah, yes, thanks for mentioning propositions. That was another point mentioned that I thought was odd/interesting. I don't think that a proposition ever has to be involved, though one might be able to translate many (most?) intuitions into a proposition.Quoting T Clark
We learn, build, a model of the world and how it works.
I think we might also be born with some talents with intuition. Now, sometimes it might be that we are born with a tendency to notice/focus on X, and so we are better at intuition in that area. But I am not sure that covers all precocious skills in intuition.Quoting T Clark
It doesn't supersede reason.
No, But we do have a couple of ways of making decisions/drawing conclusions, and I get the feeling that some people, and a higher percentage in online discussion forums with academic topics think we would be better off with just one. Further they seem to believe they are truly distinct processes, where I think that reason needs intuition, that it is used as a part of reason, a needed to in every reasoning process. I think many people confuse how reason looks on paper with what actually happens in their minds. And what happens in their minds uses intuition in lots of tiny support steps. But for some reason they think, often, we would be better off if we had only reason/rationality - formal, logical verbal analysis and deduction, induction, abduction working their little engines. So, yes, I think intuition comes first in the process, though I do think one might be able to deduct from a model (a scientific one, say) the focus of research. But even after a burst of intuition to hypothesis, any research project, and paper-writing process, any thining about what one is doing, will include (one notices, if one dives phenomenlogically in) thousands of instances of intuition.
Ah, yes, thanks for mentioning propositions. That was another point mentioned that I thought was odd/interesting. I don't think that a proposition ever has to be involved, though one might be able to translate many (most?) intuitions into a proposition.
Formal logic applies to propositions. Other forms of rationality don't necessarily. Still, as @javra and I discussed previously in this thread, what we call rationality often seems to lead to reductionist results that don't take into account broader perspectives and indirect effects, e.g. environmental damage.
I think we might also be born with some talents with intuition. Now, sometimes it might be that we are born with a tendency to notice/focus on X, and so we are better at intuition in that area. But I am not sure that covers all precocious skills in intuition.
This makes sense to me, although I don't have any specific knowledge about it.
No, But we do have a couple of ways of making decisions/drawing conclusions, and I get the feeling that some people, and a higher percentage in online discussion forums with academic topics think we would be better off with just one. Further they seem to believe they are truly distinct processes, where I think that reason needs intuition, that it is used as a part of reason, a needed to in every reasoning process. I think many people confuse how reason looks on paper with what actually happens in their minds. And what happens in their minds uses intuition in lots of tiny support steps. But for some reason they think, often, we would be better off if we had only reason/rationality - formal, logical verbal analysis and deduction, induction, abduction working their little engines.
I agree with this.
PantagruelNovember 11, 2022 at 12:33#7556560 likes
Formal logic applies to propositions. Other forms of rationality don't necessarily. Still, as javra and I discussed previously in this thread, what we call rationality often seems to lead to reductionist results that don't take into account broader perspectives and indirect effects, e.g. environmental damage.
Yes, logic can be overrated. Dewey differentiates between two fundamental original orientations in philosophy, the "lower" practical-technical and the "higher" governing form whose province was the determination of what was best and desirable. Aligning itself with tradition, in order to consolidate and justify its governing role, this is where we can see reason give way to rationality (rationalization).
Dewey paints a beautiful picture of rationality as an exaggerated and over-logicized form of thinking:
And this brings us to a second trait of philosophy springing from its origin. Since it aimed at a rational justification of things that had been previously accepted because of their emotional congeniality and social prestige, it had to make much of the apparatus of reason and proof. Because of the lack of intrinsic rationality in the matters with which it dealt, it leaned over backward, so to speak, in parade of logical form. In dealing with matters of fact, simpler and rougher ways of demonstration may be resorted to. It is enough, so to say, to produce the fact in question and point to itthe fundamental form of all demonstration. But when it comes to convincing men of the truth of doctrines which are no longer to be accepted upon the say-so of custom and social authority, but which also are not capable of empirical verification, there is no recourse save to magnify the signs of rigorous thought and rigid demonstration. Thus arises that appearance of abstract definition and ultra-scientific argumentation which repels so many from philosophy but which has been one of its chief attractions to its devotees.
At the worst, this has reduced philosophy to a show of elaborate terminology, a hair-splitting logic, and a fictitious devotion to the mere external forms of comprehensive and minute demonstration. Even at the best, it has tended to produce an overdeveloped attachment to system for its own sake, and an over-pretentious claim to certainty. (from Reconstruction in Philosophy)
From that I infer that in cases where a law is rational, you think criminal acts are not rational. I was disagreeing that is necessarily true.
Well it is a matter of perspective is it not?
The law may be rational in that it seeks to say, stop organised crime selling unregulated and potentially dangerous drugs and not paying taxes on the profits.
And it may be rational to the person to buy such a drug (like cannabis where it is illegal) to ameliorate the suffering of say a family member that is dying of cancer (to improve appetite, decrease pain and improve mood).
In this case both the law is rational (from the lawmakers perspective) and rational to the person (on an ethical basis for their relative that is suffering beyond what anyone can/is doing for them with legal means.
Its a complex situation. There is validity on both sides yet in conflict with one another. I can only imagine a third option is the solution. A distinction may need to be made between the different purchasers of an illegal drug based on their intentions/reasons for doing so. Or perhaps a loosening of the law and enforcing of regulation on the availability and quality of the drug to safeguard civilians and put pressure on the criminals to conform with regulation.
If I need money to finance a drug habit or to take a trip to Las Vegas and I rob a store to get it, that is not necessarily irrational. It's illegal and immoral and likely to have very bad consequences for the criminal, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily irrational either.
If I need money to finance a drug habit or to take a trip to Las Vegas and I rob a store to get it, that is not necessarily irrational. It's illegal and immoral and likely to have very bad consequences for the criminal, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily irrational either.
Yes absolutely. You're quite right T Clark. It's not irrational in that it serves the purposes of the criminal (assuming they get away with it). But despite it being rational to then its selfish.
And morality is based on the difference between selfishness and selflessness.
So in the case I have, you could argue that the person buying illegal drugs that have a relieving effect on suffering to help the person they love is a selfless act.
They are putting themselves in direct harms way (the law and criminal penalties they may face) just to help another person feel better through illness/tough times.
The law tries to take these factors into consideration. It is up to a judge to determine whether someone did something disappoving to the law, in the sole interest of love, in an effort to save/reduce their loved ones.
So the criminal stealing to go gamble in Las Vegas is a very different situation from the "criminal" ignoring the law to aid another's suffering.
Its a simple as that. The law and public are generally sympathetic to such cases hence why laws are often challenged and amended based on the people they didn't consider in their sweeping generalisation (being applied equally to all civilians). Sadly such people which I believe have purely good intentions, dont always win in those contentious debates and end up serving prison time.
Not all people in prison are neccesarily "bad people". Its merely a mistake that they took responsibility for even if they didn't do something inherently harmful. Or at least made their best attempts not to.
Humans are flawed. Civilians are flawed. And the justice system they create is equally flawed and requires revision in cases where it wasn't applied correctly that's why we have an appeals process.
The law is doing its best to emulate the social conscience (at leaat in democracies).
Yes, it's fine. But you and I are focusing on different things. I'm looking only at rationality and you're taking a broader perspective. Nothing wrong with either way, but they don't match up.
Yes, it's fine. But you and I are focusing on different things. I'm looking only at rationality and you're taking a broader perspective. Nothing wrong with either way, but they don't match up.
I thought we agreed that it was rational from the point of view of both sides. Are you saying only the law is rational? Or only the criminal is rational?
Or am I correct in saying (from a border perspective of course), that both sides make good arguments depending on the quality of their moral intention.
I don't see how you and I are actually disagreeing.
And morality is based on the difference between selfishness and selflessness.
It often does frame things this way, but I think it is a faulty model. It presumes, I think, that if left to my interests, I would not take care of others. It is as if the self is selfish. But the self includes empathy. We are built for this also. When we model this as 'he needs to learn how to be selfless, for example, we are presuming that he doesn't have a natural urge to reduce the suffering of others.' I am not making a pollyanish case for humans. I see all sorts of urges in us, but I want to stress that some of them, built into the self, are empathetic urges. Once our assumes are that empathy, for example, is not part of the self. That we must set aside the self to get to empathy and care for others, we are telling selves that having a self, coming from a self, is a problem. IOW guilt and shame slip in a apriori needs for good communal behavior, kindness and so on. We do not have to set aside the self's (even) immediate desires to be empathic and kind. I hope this doesn't seem like mere pedantry or nitpicking over terms. I think this model has actually done tremendous damage to us and society. We are mammals, with complicated limbic systems, and while there is controversy around mirror neurons, SOMETHING is us ties the self inextricably to others, directly. We aren't komodo dragons or wasps.
Which is why you need to do a lot of propaganda work to set the stage for things like the Holocaust or what happened in Rwanda. You have to fight this core portion of the self very hard, for a long time, preferably from early childhood. And for generations.
Another angle on this: someone is judged as selfish for not sharing their stuff. I think it's actually better to tell them they are not being selfish enough. I think there is even better language possible, but this, I think is more accurate than saying they are being too selfish.
If it was a komodo dragon or a wasp, on the other hand, telling them to be more selfish implies a misunderstanding of the nature of those creatures.
That we must set aside the self to get to empathy and care for others, we are telling selves that having a self, coming from a self, is a problem.
Well, obviously we must have a physical self. But I think it pertains more to "only thinking about yourself" or being "self-absorbed". That to me is selfishness. When others needs for resources come second and only second to your own.
It is reflected well by the sentiment that so many mothers tell us when we are small "the world doesn't revolve around you!"
Selflessness for me is not about not existing as a physical self, but rather it's about extending your awareness and consideration beyond your own needs to envelope those of others.
We naturally think of our family as part of our" sphere of self, a sort of extension of our own needs" - the thing that ought to be protected, helped, shared resources with etc for the simple fact that we love them, and having them around, safe from struggle and suffering.
There is a fine line however, to have others best interests at heart you cannot force them to do what you want. You must always allow others to have freedom of choice and simply demonstrate through action why what you think is good for them is indeed the case and let them choose if they want to agree with you or not.
This fine line is a tumultuous struggle we frequently find ourselves in with our own parents especially during puberty when our independence from them is really developing. What might be in your best interest according to your father/mother may be forced on you with scorn, and that can lead to arguments.
Parents have to recognise the point when their fully dependent child has grown up and developed their own personality, and thus respect their boundaries, trusting that they know what is best for themselves. Otherwise an overbearing parent will foster a non compliant child, which may do the wrong thing just in spite of the fact that they feel they aren't allowed to make their own choices.
At the end of the day, no parent can prevent their kids from making their own mistakes/get hurt. They need to. To learn. And only then do children or young adults realise that all along their parents really did have the best intentions for them, and they come back to them. They agree to be an "extension of self", part of the family, "togetherness" rather than "otherness - non self"
Which is why you need to do a lot of propaganda work to set the stage for things like the Holocaust or what happened in Rwanda. You have to fight this core portion of the self very hard, for a long time, preferably from early childhood. And for generations.
Very true Bylaw. Propaganda is based on deluding people away from the idea of "self", pitting them against eachother. Its most evil and unsettling I think.
Another angle on this: someone is judged as selfish for not sharing their stuff. I think it's actually better to tell them they are not being selfish enough. I think there is even better language possible, but this, I think is more accurate than saying they are being too selfish.
Yes it depends on what idea of "selfish" one has. If they think it is about serving their own physical self, gathering and not sharing resources - then they are being materialistic selfish/physicalist selfish.
But if they think selfishness is about propagating a sense of unity, sense of oneness, to others, then as you said they ought to be more "selfish" and disperse resources and their wisdom etc. In this case they are being "spiritually/Immaterially/non material selfish".
Two very different meanings of the word selfish. One more ethically permissable than the other. A good grounds for argument indeed. And likely a good way to fight propaganda as you pointed out.
Well, obviously we must have a physical self. But I think it pertains more to "only thinking about yourself" or being "self-absorbed". That to me is selfishness. When others needs for resources come second and only second to your own.
I have more trouble with having selfless as a positive term than selfish as a negative one. One you have the pair of terms, I think it causes problems. As far as needs for resources, I do think we, being closer to ourselves, need to prioritize ourselves. It's when we take more than we need that a real problem comes in.Quoting Benj96
It is reflected well by the sentiment that so many mothers tell us when we are small "the world doesn't revolve around you!"
Sure. But that's a long way from praising selflessness. Further my main point is that once we make it seem like we have needs and desires about ourselves, and other people have needs and desires for themselves, so we have to be selfless, it is as if we have no needs to be kind to others or built in desires to reduce suffering and to suffer with. We have those desires also and they are a part of the self. We don't need to lose the self to be kind and empathetic.Quoting Benj96
Selflessness for me is not about not existing as a physical self, but rather it's about extending your awareness and consideration beyond your own needs to envelope those of others.
Then it's not selflessness. Words are tools and I now know more about your use of the term and I can work with that. But the word is selfless. Homeless is without a home. Remorseless indicates no remorse. And so on. Yes, words can shift meanings over time, but I think this word should not have positive connotations. And yes, there would be something wrong with us if we were only concerned about ourselves. But then generally speaking mammalian selves, especially the social mammals' selves don't need to be extended to have concerns for others.
Generally from there, I agree with that first response: the parent child scenario. I don't think we have particularly different ideas of what is good between humans, at least at this level of abstraction.
Very true Bylaw. Propaganda is based on deluding people away from the idea of "self", pitting them against eachother. Its most evil and unsettling I think.
Often the idea is to fight the natural identification with the other. The natural tendency to not like seeing others suffering. To fight this, indoctrinate that they are not like you, not human, not deserving of empathy. You have to find a way to reduce that part of the self that cares for others. Note: that means making them have less self.
Often the idea is to fight the natural identification with the other. The natural tendency to not like seeing others suffering. To fight this, indoctrinate that they are not like you, not human, not deserving of empathy. You have to find a way to reduce that part of the self that cares for others. Note: that means making them have less self.
Yes quite right. Proganda and alienation of others, not seeing them as human (like self) I think is fundamentally based on fear and denial. Fear that in doing so you will realise just how vulnerable and mortal you are. And denial well...as a natural must to defer that fear. For them it's wholly rational to seek out /make themselves Gods amongst men (invincible/untouchable) , but for the rest (those suffering) it is entirely unjustified/Immoral.
Yes it depends on what idea of "selfish" one has. If they think it is about serving their own physical self, gathering and not sharing resources - then they are being materialistic selfish/physicalist selfish.
But if they think selfishness is about propagating a sense of unity, sense of oneness, to others, then as you said they ought to be more "selfish" and disperse resources and their wisdom etc. In this case they are being "spiritually/Immaterially/non material selfish".
It's prior to thinking. We have parts of ourselves that when watching someone suffering feel pain ourselves. It's not like we need a philosophy, though a philosophy can affect this or patch damage from bad parenting or propaganda. We have this as part of ourselves. There are exceptions with psychopaths and sociopaths. But in general we don't need people to not have as much self. We just need to make sure we don't take away that part of the self that cares about others and identifies with them.
It is in one's self interest to see others as human and identify with them, care about them. Because that is part of the social mammal self. You're a partial person if you don't
But in general we don't need people to not have as much self. We just need to make sure we don't take away that part of the self that cares about others and identifies with them.
Then it's not selflessness. Words are tools and I now know more about your use of the term and I can work with that. But the word is selfless. Homeless is without a home. Remorseless indicates no remorse.
I see what you mean. Yes perhaps it's more appropriate to use the term self and merely expand its borders rather than call it selfless.
True selflessness would be to try and rescue everyone, get hated for it by the most selfish people, and thus annihilated, martyred, murdered for your attempts to unify society, and do this knowing exactly what would happen to you. Now that, the sacrifice of the physical self to imbue wisdom into others, that is probably termed "selflessness" based on fate.
Comments (151)
I thought about starting a thread to discuss the difference between rationality and reason. They seem different to me, but they are considered synonyms. They are generally defined in terms of each other, so it's hard to separate. How would you define them?
This is how I, tentatively, see it - The discussion of anything can be rational, logical; but premises are not necessarily rational. I'd go further and say premises are generally not rational, which isn't to say they are irrational. Most of our thinking is not rational. We grasp most things without tracing our knowledge back to a source. Rationality comes into play when we have to go back and justify what we've proposed.
One way I think of reason as different from rationality, although I'm not sure it is legitimate, is in terms of broader values. Rationality is a hammer. Reason takes into account issues beyond the bare facts, e.g. clarity, civility, contemplation, cooperation. Again, that's my idiosyncratic way of looking at it.
So, yes. Discussions of criminality and ethics can be rational and reasonable.
Also, I don't think thinking is strategic. I'm not even sure what that means. Certainly a lot of our thinking is not goal oriented.
This tracks with me. I was continuing my inter-evaluation with ethics (which I think is another top-level descriptor). What if ethics is just the projection of one's relative degree of empathy in any given situation? Then ethics is just rationalization. To rationalize is to confine something to a mental schema (rationality is a hammer, as you put it). To reason is to solve a problem. Ethics is reasonable. And it is reasonable to be ethical. Butt may not be rational, if there is self-sacrifice is required.
I think that reason is probably the best umbrella term, if there is one.
I was thinking of a criminal. Who can have high situational-awareness and make complex plans. But is that sufficient to rationality?
By "top level descriptor" do you mean a category at the same level as reason or rationality? Or what?
Quoting Pantagruel
What I should have said is that thinking is not necessarily strategic.
I don't think complexity makes something rational. It's the connections between elements that are important. I'll stick with yes, criminal thinking can be rational. Didn't you see "Ocean's 11," "The Italian Job," and all those other heist movies.
Yes, trying to capture some kind of paradigm descriptor of thought in its purest or ideal form. I believe there are elements of logic, ethics, awareness, rationality. Reason.
Not necessarily. One may think strategically within a framework of delusion, with internal rules that match no rational sequence in the world of 'normal' people.
Quoting Pantagruel
Of course. Strict or lax, 'rational' refers to the thinking process, not the aim to which it is directed. Laws are arbitrary and changeable; the decision to break one or more of them can be motivated by any number of rational intentions.
Quoting Pantagruel
What about reasonable what? Ideation, belief, desire, intention, thought, behaviour? Reasonable from whose point of view? By what standard?
Quoting Pantagruel
Yes.
Quoting Pantagruel
That depends on the individual, his convictions and his circumstances.
They are, usually, but the derived word 'reasonable' is not synonymous with 'rational'. Reasonableness is a social judgment; rationality is a psychological one.
I think I know why you've chosen those elements, but you can't have thought without Intuition, emotion, imagination, visualization, memory.
I think that ambiguity is the reason I never took on the task of clarifying the distinction. There's just too much room for pointless disagreement descending into "sez you." People have a lot invested in what is considered reasonable or rational and what is not.
Just so! Reason is a component of the thinking process (normally) and the result is judged as rational or logical when the conclusion is coherent with the premises and information available. The premises or belief from which the thought begins may be entirely false (religious tenet, cultural assumption) and the information may be incorrect (optical illusion, misuse of language, inaccurate measurement, deliberate lie) and therefore the conclusion derived from them entirely wrong, disastrously wrong, as long as they are internally consistent, the thought is rational.
I suppose... But don't they in just about every kind of opinion and belief? Avoiding all of those subjects doesn't leave much to discuss. The weather, traffic, our children and our dreams...
I think the terrain can be mapped. I'm reading Understanding and Explanation; in exploring the contention between the scientistic and hermeutic approaches to understanding and intentionality Apel comments several times how the approaches mutually exclude to the extent that they complement. I think that the "key players" in this debate likewise all play their parts and can be profitably explored through example usages (if not reduced to simplistic definitions).
Sure, the premises may be wrong, but they also may just be non-rational. In a recent thread I made the claim that all premises, if you trace them back to their source, are non-rational.
Quoting Vera Mont
I'm mostly thinking about here on the forum. There are some topics I avoid because I don't think the discussion will go anywhere useful. This one seems to be proving me wrong in that regard. For many here, rational is a value judgement. They don't acknowledge the legitimacy of things they don't consider rational or the distinction between irrational and non-rational.
As I noted in my response to @Vera Mont, this discussion seems to be proving me wrong.
Quoting Pantagruel
Can you briefly summarize these. That may be an unreasonable, although not irrational, request.
That makes no difference to the kind of thinking that is applied to a problem. The whole chain of reasoning may be invalidated at the end by one irrational premise or one false datum along the way, but the process itself is either rational or irrational. Just as the process of smelting is the same whatever the metal. The raw ores going in affect the product, not the process.
Quoting T Clark
I try don't think of forum topics in terms of utility... No, on second look, that's a lie. I do gain something, even from some of the futile, circular ones. Maybe not something practical, but at the very least, brief glimpses into other people's minds. Sometimes it's dark in there - but mostly it's just different.
For what it's worth, I find it quite reasonable and look forward to the response.
It concerns the distinction between deductive nomological events which have "explanations" (are cases of laws taking place in specifiable contexts) versus the meaningfulness of human events, which can be interpreted in contexts, which are themselves meaningful (the hermeneutic circle). Mechanical causality versus freedom is another dimension of this inquiry. I wasn't citing it so much for content as an example of how disparate concepts can complement and exclude and participate in a mutual inter-definition.
I'm only surprised no one has yet used the phrase "instrumental rationality," which could be defined something like, the rational selection of a course of action to achieve a given goal -- the kicker being that this means any goal, however arbitrary. Sometimes "reasonableness" is contrasted specifically with instrumental rationality in submitting to judgment also the worthwhileness of the goal and the acceptability of the means of achieving it, so a broader decision-making process.
I think instrumental rationality aligns closely with something I mentioned, which was situational awareness. Vera mentioned how one can think instrumentally, but within a misguided or delusive framework.
To be receptive to Reason is for one's faculty of reason to be reliably informing one about what one has reason to do and reason to believe. To be reactive to Reason is to be able reliably to respond to that information and act or believe accordingly.
Thus, a maximally rational person is someone whose reason reliably tells them about the reasons that there are, and who correspondingly acts and believes as reason bids them act and believe.
To be reasonable, by contrast, is to be suitably reason-responsive to moral reasons. A perfectly rational person would also be reasonable then. But a reasonable person will not necessarily be perfectly rational, for it is consistent with being reliably reason-responsive with respect to moral reasons that one might not be reliably responsive to instrumental or aesthetic or epistemic reasons.
This is also why a person who is highly reason-responsive to instrumental reasons - so, they've very self-interested and very good at doing what promotes their own ends - may not be reasonable if, that is, their pursuit of self-interest is not suitably regulated by moral considerations.
Similarly, someone might be highly reason-responsive to aesthetic reasons - and so be rational in that respect - yet not be reasonable (Gauguin, for instance, who abandoned his family to pursue his art - that was aesthetically rational, but not at all reasonable).
Insofar as physical, legal, social and moral constraints allow them to. Sometimes both the rational and reasonable way to act is as unreasonably and irrationally as the people in one's community - else one may find onself in a bonfire without any toenails. Even leaving one's family may be both rational and reasonable - some families are eminently leave-worthy - but a morally bound man won't break his promises.
No human being is purely one type or another, can make all their decisions according the same mode of thought, and everything they do decide is situation-dependent. So, all decisions are likely to be some mixture of rational, ethical, instinctive, emotional and coerced.
I think so too. And tradition-authority influenced.
To solve philosophical problems requires being highly responsive to epistemic reasons (also known as evidential reasons). So, the ideal philosopher is perfectly responsive to epistemic reasons.
Needless to say, there are very few people like that. Most people's picture of reality is based largely on what they would like to be the case, or what they already believe (and can't be bothered to revise), or what they believe ought to be the case, or what they find it most attractive to consider being the case.
So, most people will reject the conclusion of an argument if they dislike it, or if it conflicts with the body of beliefs they already hold, or if they think it would be immoral to believe such a conclusion, or if they find it an ugly belief to hold. And they will do that regardless of how good the argument is.
Note: the perfectly rational person is not necessarily going to be the perfect philosopher. For there may be truths about reality that we do not have overall reason to believe. The ideally rational person recognizes what they have overall reason to believe and believes it. That we have epistemic reason to believe x does not entail that we have overall reason to believe it.
So, the dedicated philosopher may not be perfectly rational.
I agree with this but, as I noted, I think premises are by their nature non-rational, which is not to say irrational.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yes, I too have gained from those types of discussions. I've learned to avoid them if possible. I also try to keep the opening posts on threads I start very specific so I have a better chance to really examine the subject I'm interested in.
This makes sense to me. As I wrote previously:
Quoting T Clark
It would have made sense to add the worthiness of the goals to my list.
Something being rational does not make it ipso facto good. In essence, reason is using knowledge to achieve gaols (S. Pinker) and this can be in the service of almost any purpose imaginable, from serial killing to political dictatorship.
We tend to fetishise reason as a sort of transcendental virtue. And while I think reason is non-negotiable for civilised discourse, it may also be used to achieve lamentable outcomes. And how you determine the lamentable from the benign will likely depend upon your worldview.
Whatall premises? How so?
And this is another aspect I think. Reason is also social and dialogic/dialectical in nature. Even when we think, we reason internally as an internal discussion.
Here's my thinking. Non-trivial premises come from one of two places 1) They are established using deductive logic from previous premises or 2) They are established by inductive logic from empirical observations. If you follow every chain of deductions backwards, you will ultimately come to at least one premise that has to be established empirically.
How do people turn empirical observations into generalizations that can be used as premises? 1) They look at patterns they or others have seen before with other observations or, if that doesn't work or if they haven't seen similar observations before 2) They generate new generalizations that can be tested. If you follow every chain of generalizations backwards, you will ultimately come to at least one that has to be established based on a new generalizations.
How do people generate new generalizations from observations? I do it by pouring information into my brain, letting it spin around for a while until a pattern emerges, an insight. Intuition. Generating a new premise, a hypothesis, is not a logical process. It requires that something new be created where there was nothing before. Then that new idea can be tested using empirical methods. You have to have a hypothesis before you can apply logic. Before you can be rational.
This is not my personal experience. Most of my useful thinking, things other than worrying or fantasizing, takes place subconsciously. It pops up and then I have to apply reason to check whether or not it makes sense.
Why can't we suppose that much of the reasoning we do every day begins, not with a generalization generated by the thinker, but by a 'given' circumstance. That, I guess would be empirically observable:
Situation: I am standing on a hard surface in the dark.
Problem: I am not satisfied to stand here until daybreak (Memory has kicked in with two pieces of information: it's night and it usually ends with sunrise)
I don't see any of that as irrational.
You're not describing a new generalization. This is something you learned when you were three-years-old. Memory is not reason.
Quoting Vera Mont
Again, non-rational is not the same as irrational.
No. There are uninformed or fallaciously-derived "strategies".
Yes. It is often not irrational to break rules norms or conventions.
I can't tell what you mean how do you distinguish between "thinking" "rational" and "reasonable"?
My short shorthand for these terms ...
And being discursive in nature, these terms connote primarily social, not subjective, practices (Peirce-Dewey, Witty)
Quoting Pantagruel
Not always.
It's reasonable, I think; but, of course, that depends on what you mean by "ethical".
I am often stunned that this needs to be said and how nice to read it.
So, I followed this back...
Quoting T ClarkExactly. It is as if we can manage without intuition, often. Or, it is as if everything in science, say, is reasoned and empirical. Conclusions are formed, hopefully, after testing and rational analysis, but the process of science requires intution and other non-rational processes. Often if one asserts this, one is told 'but they are fallible.' Well, sure. And of course reasoned/rational processes are also fallible. But yes, intuition is fallible but necessary. We can't weed it out and function. And then as a related issue, some intuition is better than other intuition. Some people's intuition that is is better than other people's.
Of course not. I'm asking why you would need a new generalization in the first place. I'm describing a premise from which a practical, mundane chain of reasoning may start. A situation is identified. Why would it have to be new?
A problem is presented. Information (from observation and memory) is added. Reason is applied.
Either the problem is solved or the chain of reasoning breaks down due to lack of information and the subject fails to solve the problem.
Quoting T Clark
Okay. How is a real situation in which the subject may find himself non-rational? And why does it matter whether reality follows the rules of this distinction? Suppose reality does throw up a problem that is irrational, or appears irrational to the subject.
"I am standing on a hard, level surface, surrounded by endlessly repeating reflections of myself."
Can he not still apply reasoning to the problem this situation presents?
Thank you. I'm glad it was clear to you. That was the first time I really tried to write out the point I was trying to make, after toying around with it in my mind for a long time. The description I wrote was a good example of what I was trying to describe. It was intuitively clear to me based on my experience of my own thinking process that much, most, of my thinking is not rational. Taking that intuition and putting it into words was a rational act, but in its heart, at its birth, it was not.
Yes. As you note, you don't use intuition and insight as a replacement for reason. They do different things. Reason can't do what intuition does. More than that, reason knows it needs intuition. I guess maybe rationality doesn't. Maybe that's the difference. Reason has the humility to know that it doesn't provide, can't provide, all that's needed.
Quoting Vera Mont
As I've noted in my last couple of posts in this thread, my part in this discussion is itself a good example of what I'm trying to describe. It has been clear to me for a long time, based on my experience of my own thinking process; i.e. intuition, insight; that much of thinking is not rational. The description I've provided is just about the first time I've tried organizing my thoughts on this subject and putting them into words. That has been what I would call a rational process, but it's roots are in experience, not reason.
Could this be described as alternating phases of syntheticity and analyticity? Analytic thinking seems to fit the bill as a kind of framework of rationality. Whereas syntheticity, which in its very nature involves leaps, seems better described as a process of reason.
But standards of rationality change. Slavery was an accepted institution in ancient Greece. The slave Epictetus was a Stoic, which makes sense. But then so was Marcus Aurelius. So rejection of an argument at a social level could be the institution of a new rational standard.
To the extent that synthesis means linking together what is apparently unconnected it is consistent with the function of intuition for sure. The ordinary language use of reason captures my sense of it. Reason the noun is a faculty. But reasoning the verb also characterizes the thinking people use every day to solve challenges of every kind, from the most mundane to the most exotic. Rationalizing or rationalization, as was discussed, is more of a forcing of something to fit into a formalized schema, with the implication that the rationalization may not be accurate in some way. Rationalization has something of the procrustean about it. Whereas reason is more organic and practical.
Use of the word standard could imply the difference between more and a less rational forms of thinking. Is that how you meant it? Or did you just mean to indicate different kinds of rationality?
Quoting Pantagruel
Are you upholding the analytic/synthetic distinction here?
I see. We're talking about different aspects of thought.
If I look, however, at
I would think that not only are there microintuitions ongoing in such processes, but also full out intution. At least, that's how my problem solving day goes. Rapid estimates, gut reactions to people, reading of body language in small decisions during a meeting, guesses crosscultural potential meanings (crosscultural in the broadest sense not just dealing with someone of another nationality), rapid assessments (so, qualitative) of all sorts of things, scattered in and amongst dashes of deduction and induction and abduction. So, it seems to me intuition is a tool in the reason toolbox.
Rationalization, yes, to me has a perjorative sense. But rationality does not for me.
I'm acknowledging it, not sure what you mean by upholding it? And yes, I do think that standards of rationality vary both historically and culturally. Unless you want to proclaim some kind of transcendental standard, but then I'm not sure that would accurately represent the typical meaning of rationality.
Laws defines criminals.
Speaking of a war existing between Ukraine and Russia is criminal in Russia.
So yes, you can be totally rational and a criminal. Besides, I don't think rational and ethical are synonymous.
Yet even rationality, that actions are logical depends the logical system. And the premises. After all, it's quite rational to defend yourself. And so, just where you put the line between justified defense, excessive defense or unethical defense, when a "pre-emptive attack" isn't justified. As the saying the saying goes, best defense can to be to attack.
I had this in mind:
The analytic/synthetic distinction refers to a distinction between two kinds of truth. Synthetic truths are true both because of what they mean and because of the way the world is, whereas analytic truths are true in virtue of meaning alone. Snow is white, for example, is synthetic, because it is true partly because of what it means and partly because snow has a certain color. All bachelors are unmarried, by contrast, is often claimed to be true regardless of the way the world is; it is true in virtue of meaning, or analytic. The existence of analytic truths is controversial. Philosophers who have thought they exist include Immanuel Kant, Gottlob Frege, and Rudolf Carnap. The philosopher most famous for thinking that they do not is W. O. Quine.
I would add that among those philosophers who follow Quine in rejecting the analytic/ synthetic distinction are Davidson, Sellars, Putnam, Brandom, McDowell and Rorty.
More on Quine from Wiki
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a paper by analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951. According to University of Sydney professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy".[1] The paper is an attack on two central aspects of the logical positivists' philosophy: the first being the analyticsynthetic distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts; the other being reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms that refer exclusively to immediate experience.
Thinking, from the perspective of an individual is (IMO) almost always strategic and goal driven. Perhaps the objective(s) of the thinking being done aren't always about outer world goals, or immediate ones for that matter. I tend to view the mind (and the associated thinking, however seemingly mundane or counterproductive) as being more of a long-term planning module within the human apparatus.
I am very much on board with this. I see all of our thought (that is not trivially practically oriented - thirsty, get a drink) as being driven by long-range long-term goals which then realize through subsidiary objectives. Part of the problem in a reductive-causal analysis of action is that, yes, you can have some set of primary environmental conditions that would account for an action, but the underlying motives are going to be subject to subtle (or substantial) changes as the nature of the long term goal evolves in conjunction with ongoing feedback. I get in the car to go to work. But I am going to work because I have an overarching goal. Maybe to buy a new car. But if I change an even higher level goal - from magnificent consumerism to environmental harmony - then maybe I will sell my car and find a different way to work.
...potentially rational?
Well, ok, but actually as well!
I guess you just have a different experience of thinking than I do.
Right?
Agreed. Reason and rationality don't have to be done formally, in writing, with little checklists. We can do it on the fly. Did I say this before? - Maybe the difference between reason and rationality is that reason welcomes intuition and insight into the process.
Not sure what you're asking. Did I mean what I wrote? Yes. Does it seem wrong to you?
I had not heard of "abduction" used in the context of logic before, so I looked it up. What I found was interesting and relevant. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?
Quoting SEP - Abduction
And then:
Quoting SEP - Pierce on Abduction
I bolded text I think is especially relevant.
I think that's true, but I don't think a difference in the experience means there is a difference in the mechanisms or processes of thought among different people.
Ok. But if experience is empirically contingent, then there must be some empirical differentiator? Even if it is like the same light shining on two differently coloured plates. The plates absorb different spectrums of the light, so are experiencing very different aspects of the same thing. (Which reflects in the colours they reflect.)
People are aware of their own experiences at different levels and in different ways. I don't think that means the processes themselves are different. If you and I look at exactly the same image under the same conditions we are likely to have somewhat different experiences.
I don't see that as true in my case. Based on my experience of my own thinking, much of it is wandering and playful. Curiosity leads me off in directions with no obvious utility. It's possible to let thinking take you where it wants to go with no clear goal. That's the kind of thinking that's the most fun. Thinking is, or at least can be, play.
I don't understand what you're saying. My claim is that to be rational is to be reason-responsive. that is, it is to recognize and respond to reasons to do things and reasons to believe things.
But you have said something quite different and that does not challenge what I have said, whether it is true or not.
Let's say that the character of Reason has changed over time such that, other things being equal, what we have reason to do today in circumstances S we would not have had reason to do 1,000 years ago in exactly the same circumstances.
How does that challenge the idea that being rational involves being reason-responsive? A highly rational person today would get the impression, today, that they have reason to do X in circumstances S. But if they had been around 1000 years ago in identical circumstances they would have had the impression that they have reason to do Y in circumstances S.
So it seems to me that you are mixing two quite different topics. There is the question of how stable the rational aspect to reality is (the aspect that 'being rational' involves recognizing and responding to). And then there is what it is to be rational.
For an analogy: imagine you had asked 'what is it to see things?' And someone offers an answer. It is no response to say "but things people saw 1,000 years ago they do not see today".
I have always thought of 'rational' as related to 'ratio', which suggests comparison, measurement, determination and balance.
A rational or reasonable conclusion is a balanced conclusion. The tricky thing about intuition is that we don't know whether these processes of comparison, measurement etc.,have gone on subconsciously.
I don't know if you saw the excerpts from the SEP about abduction I posted in a response to ByLaw previously. The issue discussed in those texts is the distinction between generating hypotheses and validating them. Yes, intuition might miss something important. Brainstorming is a process of quickly tossing out ideas without trying to exclude those that probably won't work. The process is meant to generate a lot of hypotheses for further testing. That's where reason/rationality comes in.
I wasn't so much concerned about intuition missing anything, but more about the implicit rational thinking that might have been going on sub-consciously when we find that an intuitive response has suddenly appeared in our consciousness.
This comment took me by surprise, even startled me a bit. You are proposing that intuition includes some sort of secret logic we are not aware of. My first reaction is that the idea is absurd, but I'll try to give a more thoughtful, perhaps reasoned, even rational response than just that.
I see two possibilities. 1) There is no secret rational component to intuition. And 2) It doesn't matter one way or the other. Let's start with 1. In my experience, intuition works by making non-rational connections between unlike ideas. That's consistent with reading I've done that claims that fundamental mental processes work by making analogical, metaphorical connections rather than linear ones. I'm not capable of taking that argument any further at this point, so we'll leave it at that.
On to 2. It seems clear to me that rational processes are ones we have to be conscious, aware, of. They have to be put into a language, possibly mathematics or logic. It is the essence of reason that it has to be transparent. You cannot claim to be rational if you can't provide a description of the chain of logic you've followed to reach a conclusion for others to examine and validate. Again in my experience, rational evaluation is something I have to apply to a hypothesis after I come up with it.
I tend to react to the words this way also. Rationality seems focused, even if it is on the fly or just in the head, on (intended to be) logical verbal processes, whereas reason seems to mean something processes of good thinking, whatever they are like. I don't tend to keep the terms separate and I think others will not have this way of separating them, but I do have a dash of that tendency myself.
Continuing this approach, having a reason versus having a rationale. A reason is offered as causally sufficient and self-evident. I used metal to build this wheel instead of wood so it will last longer. A rationale is an internally coherent explanatory framework which is invoked precisely when there is no exemplary reason. I do not know where I dropped my watch, so I chose to search for it under the streetlamp because there is more light there. A rationale is invoked as a reason when no more specific reason exists.
I think it is possible to be criminal and also rational in the case that the law is irrational.
Which is entirely possible as laws are ammended because they recognise they didn't consider a specific situation whereby one is deemed criminal under current legal constraints but the general populous empathises with them on the grounds that they believe the persons intentions were good and their options to minimise harm were not available to them legally.
For example, imagine a person whos loved one is severely depressed, and nothing legally available to them appears to be potent enough to rid that depression. They're sure their loved one will take their own life if no one does anything fast and effective soon. They're desperate to save them.
So that person considers say some drug that they researched is effective against depression - perhaps a hallucinogen or cannabis. So they buy it despite the fact that they're aware its illegal in their country.
It has the desired effect, and their loved one appears to be improving. So they continue to purchase it. On the third instance they're caught and taken to court. They plead guilty but only because they were doing everything and anything necessary to spare their loved one from suicide.
In this case is it really fair to consider them a criminal and penalise them thus? Or ought the law be ammended based on empirical evidence and rationality?
In my opinion law does try it's best to uphold justice, but like any human institution it is not without flaw. And therefore should always be open to improvement.
Yes. As I noted, that difficulty in separating the concepts is the reason I didn't start a discussion like this one previously. As it is though, this has turned out to be a really good one for me. I've really been able to make what I think clearer to myself.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes. Reason is an iterative process. Rough and tumble.
Your example is a good example of the problem with making a definitive distinction between the two concepts. I think calling "I used metal to build this wheel instead of wood so it will last longer" a rationale would be just as accurate as calling it a reason.
Why does it matter whether or not the crime is rational? Seems to me that robbing a bank so I can be rich could be just as rational as buying illegal drugs to help my friend. Which is not to say they are morally equivalent.
They're not morally equivalent which is exactly what laws are based on. Giving to charity and murdering 300 people are also not morally equivalent and yes the law has something to say about the distinction.
So whats your point?
Moral is about helping others not to suffer not serving yourself for your own benefit to the detriment of others (all the people that suffer because you robbed their savings in the bank) .
Both may be rational on a personal basis but they're not both ethical (on a collective basis).
Hence what is rational to save another person from suicide (a selfless act ie risking your own wellbeing for another's) is ethically higher than risking others wellbeing for your own.
The two examples are entirely different so your fixation on the fact that they are both rational in relativity to the person acting completely ignore ethics - what's more prudent to do.
Quoting Pantagruel
I'm late in the game, and lots of rational thinking on this thread.
But my response to the above is:
Yes, one can be strategic (based on how you define it) but not rational. Sociopaths can be highly strategic and able to make complex plans, but they are not rational. Their thinking patterns are done in a vacuum, without regard to the people around them, their own situation or location, or their environment. Not sure if you've heard or read about a brief comic illustration of the mind of a sociopath. Here's a version of that example:
A man attended his uncle's funeral and saw a beautiful woman among the mourners. Knowing nothing else of the woman, but wanting to see her again, he killed his aunt.
You say:
Quoting Benj96
From that I infer that in cases where a law is rational, you think criminal acts are not rational. I was disagreeing that is necessarily true.
Not exactly, I am just saying that rational thought processes may be going on that we are not aware of. There doesn't seem to be any logical contradiction or impossibility in that conjecture.
Quoting T Clark
I agree that intuition probably works by associating images, impressions and concepts. Alchemy, astrology, acupuncture, hermeticism and homeopathy are some examples of ways of intuitively associating qualities of elements, things and processes via perceived similarities or affinities. There is a logic to this, which is not empirically based in our modern scientific understanding, but I would call it rational nonetheless,
Quoting T Clark
I see no reason to believe that rational thought processes must be executed consciously. If the brain/mind can do strict logic or any other form of associating ideas consciously,why could it not carry on with such processes in the absence of conscious awareness. I mean, maybe it can't do that; but if that were so we would need evidence and an argument to establish it.
Quoting Janus
Well, now we've raised the question of whether rational thought processes have to be conscious. I vote yes, but I don't have a definitive argument to back that up.
Quoting Janus
You start out associating intuition with discredited ways of knowing - alchemy, astrology, etc. I don't understand that. Intuition is not something esoteric or mysterious. It's an everyday process our minds use all the time. Then you describe those intuitive processes as a kind of rationality. It seems like you are identifying rationality as anything the mind does to collect information or solve problems.
I'm not trying to diminish intuition. I think it is an imaginative faculty. Those "discredited" (by some) ways of understanding I believe are based on imaginative associations that are intuitively thought to "make sense" or "feel right". I also think there is always an implicit logic in what ties the associations that are made together. For example Mars is the planet associates with the God of war, (and hence we get the word 'martial') because it appears red and red is the colour of blood, which it seems obvious to associate with war.
So I am not claiming that these processes of reasoning are deductively valid or empirically based, but they are different ways of balancing, measuring and associating things which have their own kinds of logic.
The medieval and ancients minds reasoned in these kinds of different ways than modern empirical and deductive minds do. That said, there are still plenty, perhaps even a good majority, of people alive today who think in those 'old' ways.
The other point is that whatever kinds of reasoning a human being consciously deploys to deliberate and arrive at reasoned conclusions, whether they be ancient or modern, in cases where a conclusion is reached "instantly", as we understand it, "via intuition", I still see no reason to deny that these processes of reasoning might go on without conscious awareness. I am not affirming that such reasoning does or can go on unconsciously either; I don't actually have an opinion on the matter.
Seems like you are changing the meaning of the word "logic" in mid-discussion. We can leave it at that. If we go on we'll get into more and more nitpicking which I don't think will lead to a satisfactory resolution for either of us. This has been a really good discussion.
Just a final question to consider. In cultures existing prior to, or unaffected by, our current conception of empiric and propositional logic-based reasoning, would you say there was no distinction between rational and irrational thinking, or reasonableness and unreasonableness?
Answer if you wish, or not. In any case I agree it's been a very good discussion. :smile:
That's a great question and I know it's directed at @T Clark. If rationality is using knowledge to achieve goals, then probably. But there is always a foundational set of values by which a culture measures itself. Many people believe that reason is synonymous with The Age of Reason - what we call knowledge and the practices this engenders must be arrived at without superstition and with no logical fallacies. At one end of the continuum this is probably scientism.
"If rationality is using knowledge to achieve goals"; that sounds right, and I would include reasoning from existing knowledge/ understanding to enable the drawing of novel conclusions in that.
I agree there are always basic sets of values that cultures understand themselves in terms of. I am not so fond of a narrow conception of reason that understands it as being only that which accords with our Enlightenment and subsequent conceptions of rationality. I think "no logical fallacies" is right, although I think it pays to remember that inductive and abductive ways of reasoning are not bound by deductive criteria of validity. Previous cultures may have held what we would call superstitions as foundational premises upon which to reason and arrive at the "inferences to the best explanations" they were able to derive.
This is pretty much where I was heading. Do you think that is just a congenital or organic deficiency? Or did they lose or renounce the ability to be rational?
Great question. A history of reason would make an interesting read. :chin:
And this makes it interesting to me. How is a standard of reasonableness determined if superstition and magic are your compass points? I remember sitting with a staunch, right-wing Catholic in a cafe one afternoon. In walked an Islamic family. The Catholic gentleman clucked, shook his head and uttered 'Primitives!' Here's the question - is the secular humanist who regards both my Catholic fella and the Islamic family and their worldviews with dismay any more 'entitled' to his values driven reasoning here?
I don't mind trying to answer, but I don't have much insight to offer. To start, I'll say again - irrational and non-rational are not the same thing. Intuition is not irrational, it's non-rational. I don't know what happened in ancient cultures. Julien Jaynes in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" claimed that consciousness did not develop in humans until about 4,000 years ago. I've always been skeptical of that, but I don't know for sure. As I noted before, I think rational thought is probably not possible without self-awareness. If Jaynes and I are both right, I guess that would mean that there was no rational thought until about 4,000 years ago.
Is he talking consciousness or metacognition?
If all it takes to be rational is using knowledge to achieve goals, then animals are rational. Any mental process that may lead to action is rational. That takes all the meaning out of the word. It's certainly not how we've been using the word up till now in this discussion.
Jaynes defines consciousness as "the human ability to introspect." I interpret that to mean that consciousness is self-awareness - the capacity to think abstractly about ourselves. Does that answer your question?
HAVARD GAZETTE: Can you define rationality in a sentence?
PINKER: I define it as the use of knowledge to attain a goal, where knowledge, according to the standard philosophers definition, is justified true belief.
Perhaps this latter bit I left out precludes the animal kingdom.
Lots to take issue with, like JTB.
Bingo. Thanks.
Well, I think justified true belief as an explanation of knowledge is wrong-headed, so that doesn't resolve anything for me. No, I don't want to talk about JTB.
I am happy with Pinker's definition but I recognize its problems. Is not part of the issue that some of us see reason as a superior pathway to truth (small 't') - and let's not get onto that one either.
I think we're coming up against the problem that we never did define what "rational" means back at the beginning. For me, it means a systematic search for knowledge and understanding following a formal system such as logic, the rules of which are specified in advance. It's probably too late to go into that now.
To be forthright: First off, as a matter of opinion, we disagree on what the term rational ought to refer to. I for one believe it should be roughly described as the ability to discern and apply reasons (like causes and motives) and comparisons (with ratios as one example among humans) for the sake of optimally fulfilling goals, be these needs (like physical sustenance so as to maintain physical health) or desires (with improved eudemonia as one example sometimes spoken of by philosophers). But, I grant, my definition does not need to be strictly applicable to only humans, and I get that many dont want to ascribe rationality to any lesser life form. Be this as it may.
An observation based on the quoted definition of rational:
So called primitive people that lack rationality as just defined (and which have not been intruded nor in any other significant way influenced by westerners: certain people in the Amazonian forests and Inuit people as two examples) have lived in mutual benefit with their natural environment for as long as theyve been known to be, resulting in the preservation of a healthy ecology in which they subsist.
We westerners, who as a grouping arguably represent the apex of this rationality as defined, are deteriorating our natural environment to the point of causing the sixth mass extinction, environmental collapse, and our own demise as a people - and this, for the most part, without giving a hoot.
I know theres bound to be (this from at least some person somewhere), but in assuming no indignantly emotive attempts to rationalize these two just stated facts:
If the cultures in which (your sense of) rationality prevails happen to callously and obliviously bring about the steady obliteration of the inhabitable planet - and, via rational inference, of themselves as a peoples in the process - while those cultures devoid of rationality (as you've defined it) do no such thing, whats one to make of rationalitys value?
I dont know, your present definition leaves me with a topsy-turvy feel in this context.
Again, it's not my sense of what it means, it's what it actually does mean. You propose a more holistic approach to knowledge and understanding, which I endorse. Rationality is reductionist. Logic only applies to propositions, statements of fact. Question - How many true propositions does it take to paint an accurate picture of reality. Answer - Trick question. Reality can't be described effectively with any number of propositions.
Probably right. It might even be instructive to identify that which is irrational. If belief in god is rational (and not everyone agrees) is belief that you are going to burn in hell because you are a sinner irrational?
I don't think it is easy to have a discussion like this without recognising that reason belongs to a web of interrelated ideas and values and any substantive discussion will lead us irrevocably to matters of truth and reality.
As I noted in my response to @javra, above, I don't think rationality is really capable of dealing with "a web of interrelated ideas and values."
I struggle to see how it wouldn't if we're exploring reason as a practice to guide human behaviour and choices. I'm not sure how we understand the rational/irrational in isolation without locating this within a set of values and situational exigencies? Maybe I'm missing something.
For the record: Best I could do in finding a good reference for what rationality means is this. The SEP section of this article lists seven possible meanings of rationality (without claiming them to be exhaustive), none of which appear to me to coincide with what you claim the official, or formal, meaning of rationality is. Particularly, your claim that it be "a systematic search for knowledge and understanding following a formal system such as logic, the rules of which are specified in advance".
If you could provide some reference for the meaning of rationality as you've specified it, I could then learn something new and be more in the know, so to speak.
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ps. If interested, a different SEP article on rationality that touches on the topic of this thread. From the first paragraph of the article:
"This thesis appears to threaten the rational authority of morality. It seems possible that acting morally on some occasion might not be a suitable means to an agents ends. If so, then according to this thesis, it would not be irrational for her to refuse to act morally on such an occasion."
"Reason" as a faculty separate from experience, introducing us to a superior region of universal truths begins now to strike us as remote, uninteresting and unimportant. Reason, as a Kantian faculty that introduces generality and regularity into experience, strikes us more and more as superfluousthe unnecessary creation of men addicted to traditional formalism and to elaborate terminology....
...reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the pattern of science, and used in the creation of social arts; it has something to do. It liberates man from the bondage of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into custom. It projects a better future and assists man in its realization. And its operation is always subject to test in experience. The plans which are formed, the principles which man projects as guides of reconstructive action, are not dogmas. They are hypotheses to be worked out in practice, and to be rejected, corrected and expanded as they fail or succeed in giving our present experience the guidance it requires....
In contrast with this experimental and re-adjusting intelligence, it must be said that Reason as employed by historic rationalism has tended to carelessness, conceit, irresponsibility, and rigidityin short absolutism.
edit: the notion of the bridging of the nomothetic-scientific and the social-hermeutic (which is how Dewey characterizes reason here) is central to Understanding and Explanation by Apel, which I'm currently reading.
I think you're right. Your definition of "rational" is a valid one.
Thanks, though, for the tentative approbation.
Agreed. As I noted, it's best if definitions are agreed on, or at least discussed, early in a thread.
Quoting Pantagruel
I guess he's describing a fallibilistic approach.
Quoting Pantagruel
Possibly what I was getting at when I said that reason can be better understood in the context of situational exigencies.
Similarly Apel talks about the "rational determination of situational boundary conditions" - I like the phrase situational awareness.
Much of my understanding of reason comes from the old secular humanist clash with religion, where reason is seen as being in opposition to faith, as a 'more reliable' tool for guiding life choices. I'm sure an anti foundationalist position like postmodernism would consider reason to be a kind of fetishized relic of an approach fading in relevance. But I guess if you are arguing against the use of reason you are using reason... My cursory familiarity with Richard Rorty suggests that he thought reason could be replaced with acts of creative imagination - perhaps this was also Nietzsche's approach?
Thanks.
On the question of whether sociopaths are born, not made, I believe if we looked at the historical evidence, most, if not all, of them showed signs that it's always been in them, which means they were born with that trait. Ted Bundy, as an example, at one point tried to convince the public that he wasn't, that he got to be that way because of his own doing -- obsession with sexual violence on film. He claimed he grew up in a normal family environment. etc. This is all bullshit. (though it was true that he didn't suffer from abuse, or that he grew up in a normal family) If you looked at the footages of his capture, when he was being moved from one location to another, or just walking to the courtroom escorted by the police, you'd see how he didn't have command of his mind. Somehow, this man, during his interview, wanted so much to show a side of him that's sophisticated and educated. A far cry from the irrationality of how he victimized those women.
Agreed. Rational does not necessarily include ethical. But since when each adjective (or noun) is used, we tend to mean an ideal trait: Good, Beautiful and True blended. So, it is bothersome to think of a rational criminal. But I can't see any reason not to, for example, distinguish between an extremely effective, rational criminal and an dull witted one who gets caught all the time.
Agreed.
Also that rationality or reason includes specific positions. Like if you believe in God and argue that God exists or cannot be ruled out or any other what was called pre-Enlightenment beliefs are part of your argument or conclusions, then it is not reason/rationality. I think that is a poor use of the terms. These are process words. Nouns describing what one does, not what one believes or concludes. I think that's a better use. Or was Newton not reasoning because he had non-relative space time in his conclusions? For example. Because he was wrong or partly wrong or had incorrect metaphysical assumptions. (not even mentioning his other beliefs)
I suppose I am also saying that one can reason one's way to an incorrect conclusion. Or one we do not know if it is correct or not. Or two people can be reasoning together and disagree, or be being rational and yet have opposed opinions. It's not a content issue.
Otherwise we then later find that oh, he wasn't reasoning because it turns out he was wrong. Or, oh she wasn't being rational because it turns out she was wrong.
I don't think that's a good way to use these terms.
This then also leaves room for non-rational processes that might be useful.
My understanding of intuition comes from introspection, reading some eastern philosophy, and 30 years handling and using data as an engineer, not from any specific scientific source. Given that context, here's how I see it. From the minute we are born, probably earlier, we make observations, take in information. Very little of it comes from any kind of formal learning and very little of it is easily expressible in propositions, which are really the only things that formal rationality, logic, can process. We don't learn the answer to a bunch of true/false questions. We learn, build, a model of the world and how it works. I am very aware of the model I carry around in my head and how I use it in dealing with the world and making decisions.
For me, intuition is just using the model of reality we all carry around with us to evaluate new information and make decisions. It doesn't supersede reason. As I've noted previously in this thread, intuitive knowledge comes first and can then be validated using rational methods if the situation requires it.
Formal logic applies to propositions. Other forms of rationality don't necessarily. Still, as @javra and I discussed previously in this thread, what we call rationality often seems to lead to reductionist results that don't take into account broader perspectives and indirect effects, e.g. environmental damage.
Quoting Bylaw
This makes sense to me, although I don't have any specific knowledge about it.
Quoting Bylaw
I agree with this.
Yes, logic can be overrated. Dewey differentiates between two fundamental original orientations in philosophy, the "lower" practical-technical and the "higher" governing form whose province was the determination of what was best and desirable. Aligning itself with tradition, in order to consolidate and justify its governing role, this is where we can see reason give way to rationality (rationalization).
Dewey paints a beautiful picture of rationality as an exaggerated and over-logicized form of thinking:
And this brings us to a second trait of philosophy springing from its origin. Since it aimed at a rational justification of things that had been previously accepted because of their emotional congeniality and social prestige, it had to make much of the apparatus of reason and proof. Because of the lack of intrinsic rationality in the matters with which it dealt, it leaned over backward, so to speak, in parade of logical form. In dealing with matters of fact, simpler and rougher ways of demonstration may be resorted to. It is enough, so to say, to produce the fact in question and point to itthe fundamental form of all demonstration. But when it comes to convincing men of the truth of doctrines which are no longer to be accepted upon the say-so of custom and social authority, but which also are not capable of empirical verification, there is no recourse save to magnify the signs of rigorous thought and rigid demonstration. Thus arises that appearance of abstract definition and ultra-scientific argumentation which repels so many from philosophy but which has been one of its chief attractions to its devotees.
At the worst, this has reduced philosophy to a show of elaborate terminology, a hair-splitting logic, and a fictitious devotion to the mere external forms of comprehensive and minute demonstration. Even at the best, it has tended to produce an overdeveloped attachment to system for its own sake, and an over-pretentious claim to certainty. (from Reconstruction in Philosophy)
(bolded by me)
Great quote. Thanks. I'll look up "Reconstruction in Philosophy."
Free on Amazon.
Well it is a matter of perspective is it not?
The law may be rational in that it seeks to say, stop organised crime selling unregulated and potentially dangerous drugs and not paying taxes on the profits.
And it may be rational to the person to buy such a drug (like cannabis where it is illegal) to ameliorate the suffering of say a family member that is dying of cancer (to improve appetite, decrease pain and improve mood).
In this case both the law is rational (from the lawmakers perspective) and rational to the person (on an ethical basis for their relative that is suffering beyond what anyone can/is doing for them with legal means.
Its a complex situation. There is validity on both sides yet in conflict with one another. I can only imagine a third option is the solution. A distinction may need to be made between the different purchasers of an illegal drug based on their intentions/reasons for doing so. Or perhaps a loosening of the law and enforcing of regulation on the availability and quality of the drug to safeguard civilians and put pressure on the criminals to conform with regulation.
If I need money to finance a drug habit or to take a trip to Las Vegas and I rob a store to get it, that is not necessarily irrational. It's illegal and immoral and likely to have very bad consequences for the criminal, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily irrational either.
Yes absolutely. You're quite right T Clark. It's not irrational in that it serves the purposes of the criminal (assuming they get away with it). But despite it being rational to then its selfish.
And morality is based on the difference between selfishness and selflessness.
So in the case I have, you could argue that the person buying illegal drugs that have a relieving effect on suffering to help the person they love is a selfless act.
They are putting themselves in direct harms way (the law and criminal penalties they may face) just to help another person feel better through illness/tough times.
The law tries to take these factors into consideration. It is up to a judge to determine whether someone did something disappoving to the law, in the sole interest of love, in an effort to save/reduce their loved ones.
So the criminal stealing to go gamble in Las Vegas is a very different situation from the "criminal" ignoring the law to aid another's suffering.
Its a simple as that. The law and public are generally sympathetic to such cases hence why laws are often challenged and amended based on the people they didn't consider in their sweeping generalisation (being applied equally to all civilians). Sadly such people which I believe have purely good intentions, dont always win in those contentious debates and end up serving prison time.
Not all people in prison are neccesarily "bad people". Its merely a mistake that they took responsibility for even if they didn't do something inherently harmful. Or at least made their best attempts not to.
Humans are flawed. Civilians are flawed. And the justice system they create is equally flawed and requires revision in cases where it wasn't applied correctly that's why we have an appeals process.
The law is doing its best to emulate the social conscience (at leaat in democracies).
Do you think that's a fair/balanced assessment?
Yes, it's fine. But you and I are focusing on different things. I'm looking only at rationality and you're taking a broader perspective. Nothing wrong with either way, but they don't match up.
I thought we agreed that it was rational from the point of view of both sides. Are you saying only the law is rational? Or only the criminal is rational?
Or am I correct in saying (from a border perspective of course), that both sides make good arguments depending on the quality of their moral intention.
I don't see how you and I are actually disagreeing.
I think you're right.
Which is why you need to do a lot of propaganda work to set the stage for things like the Holocaust or what happened in Rwanda. You have to fight this core portion of the self very hard, for a long time, preferably from early childhood. And for generations.
Another angle on this: someone is judged as selfish for not sharing their stuff. I think it's actually better to tell them they are not being selfish enough. I think there is even better language possible, but this, I think is more accurate than saying they are being too selfish.
If it was a komodo dragon or a wasp, on the other hand, telling them to be more selfish implies a misunderstanding of the nature of those creatures.
Well, obviously we must have a physical self. But I think it pertains more to "only thinking about yourself" or being "self-absorbed". That to me is selfishness. When others needs for resources come second and only second to your own.
It is reflected well by the sentiment that so many mothers tell us when we are small "the world doesn't revolve around you!"
Selflessness for me is not about not existing as a physical self, but rather it's about extending your awareness and consideration beyond your own needs to envelope those of others.
We naturally think of our family as part of our" sphere of self, a sort of extension of our own needs" - the thing that ought to be protected, helped, shared resources with etc for the simple fact that we love them, and having them around, safe from struggle and suffering.
There is a fine line however, to have others best interests at heart you cannot force them to do what you want. You must always allow others to have freedom of choice and simply demonstrate through action why what you think is good for them is indeed the case and let them choose if they want to agree with you or not.
This fine line is a tumultuous struggle we frequently find ourselves in with our own parents especially during puberty when our independence from them is really developing. What might be in your best interest according to your father/mother may be forced on you with scorn, and that can lead to arguments.
Parents have to recognise the point when their fully dependent child has grown up and developed their own personality, and thus respect their boundaries, trusting that they know what is best for themselves. Otherwise an overbearing parent will foster a non compliant child, which may do the wrong thing just in spite of the fact that they feel they aren't allowed to make their own choices.
At the end of the day, no parent can prevent their kids from making their own mistakes/get hurt. They need to. To learn. And only then do children or young adults realise that all along their parents really did have the best intentions for them, and they come back to them. They agree to be an "extension of self", part of the family, "togetherness" rather than "otherness - non self"
Very true Bylaw. Propaganda is based on deluding people away from the idea of "self", pitting them against eachother. Its most evil and unsettling I think.
Yes it depends on what idea of "selfish" one has. If they think it is about serving their own physical self, gathering and not sharing resources - then they are being materialistic selfish/physicalist selfish.
But if they think selfishness is about propagating a sense of unity, sense of oneness, to others, then as you said they ought to be more "selfish" and disperse resources and their wisdom etc. In this case they are being "spiritually/Immaterially/non material selfish".
Two very different meanings of the word selfish. One more ethically permissable than the other. A good grounds for argument indeed. And likely a good way to fight propaganda as you pointed out.
Generally from there, I agree with that first response: the parent child scenario. I don't think we have particularly different ideas of what is good between humans, at least at this level of abstraction.
Yes quite right. Proganda and alienation of others, not seeing them as human (like self) I think is fundamentally based on fear and denial. Fear that in doing so you will realise just how vulnerable and mortal you are. And denial well...as a natural must to defer that fear. For them it's wholly rational to seek out /make themselves Gods amongst men (invincible/untouchable) , but for the rest (those suffering) it is entirely unjustified/Immoral.
It is in one's self interest to see others as human and identify with them, care about them. Because that is part of the social mammal self. You're a partial person if you don't
Yes. Bravo :)
I see what you mean. Yes perhaps it's more appropriate to use the term self and merely expand its borders rather than call it selfless.
True selflessness would be to try and rescue everyone, get hated for it by the most selfish people, and thus annihilated, martyred, murdered for your attempts to unify society, and do this knowing exactly what would happen to you. Now that, the sacrifice of the physical self to imbue wisdom into others, that is probably termed "selflessness" based on fate.